The Clean Sweep (RWBY Noir AU)
by Cardshark92
Summary: A detective story in the style of Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and Tracer Bullet (but probably nowhere near as good), about a few women with pasts, a man with no future, a city collapsing under the weight of its own sins, and a war that could set them all ablaze.
1. Chapter 1: We Have to Start Somewhere

The Clean Sweep (RWBY Noir AU)

Chapter 1 - We have to start somewhere...

The rain was coming down like God and Monty Oum were having a tap dancing competition. Never had I been gladder to have a nice, dry roof over my head and a nice, dry martini in my hand. I checked the time, wondering when the appointments for the day would show up, and I could start with what I was either lucky or unlucky enough to call my job. 7:59, assuming my beaten-down excuse for a watch was on time. It was too quiet, something was missing.

"I'm here, sir," a timid little voice floated in from under the door before it opened. There we go. Miss Scarlatina, my secretary. She was a couple minutes late from her usual check-in. Probably some street trash poking fun at her ears as if she didn't have enough problems in life. I'd have liked nothing more than to chop some of them into cheap mystery meat, but Velvet insisted she was a grown woman and could handle her own meat-chopping.

Dust on a doughnut, I forgot to introduce myself. Name's Jaune Arc. Amateur boxer, former Vale Police Department, and now private eye. Not your usual resume, but I haven't lived a usual life.

I was getting antsy like my old police captain, "Professor" Oobleck after his morning coffee-flavored cocaine. I could have sworn I had an appointment or two that day...

"Velvet, what about those appointments I had this morning?" I asked, hoping for a nice break to the monotony.

"Let's see... First one cancelled this morning, third woman called in sick, and I've been calling the second, but he won't respond," she called back, opening the door to the cave I called an office. She was dressed in her usual style: a white blouse with enough starch in it to make it bulletproof, black pencil skirt, sheer hosiery, and a low pair of heels, the kind that a woman could actually expect to run a few steps in without falling flat on her mug. Eyes the color of melted chocolate, with a pair of red browline glasses protecting them. Long brown hair pulled back into a modest ponytail and two furry ears the size of my grandpa's old slippers poking out the top finished the look. Velv was easy enough on the eyes, and plenty competent at her job. She could have doubtlessly earned better than what I paid her, but I wasn't about to give her any ideas.

"That was the guy who got in trouble with the Torchwick gang, right?"

"Yes, but... oh. You don't think he'll be calling us back." Her tone dropped like its wings had been clipped, already putting two and two together. Her ears drooped a bit too, kinda like my mother's ferns when she forgot to water them. She solemnly pulled my door closed, mourning the man she had only met once to schedule the appointment.

"I'd love the surprise, doll, but I'm not betting on it." I sighed. The only office I could afford was in the part of town the tour guides didn't bother talking about, so people didn't bother looking me up until they were truly up the creek. And if most of my cases were up a creek, pissing off Roman Torchwick was like sailing up the creek, then shooting a few holes in your boat for good measure. I offered him a walk-in slot instead, but the patsy insisted he was safe for the time being.

It's like my old man always said, you can lead a horse to water, but it will still won't tell you how it really feels, and you'll have to keep track of a stupid horse in addition to all your other problems. My old man was never quite right in the head after the war. Lucky for me, my soliloquy got cut off by some commotion out front.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but Mr. Arc is busy right now, and surely your problem can wait until-oof!"

The door flew open, and I finally saw the woman who had derailed my train of thought. And what a derailment she was. She had a fine set of legs peeking out from her shiny gold dress, but it was the rest of her curves that drew the eye. The cut of her clothing left just enough to the imagination to keep it busy, but showed just enough to give it plenty of material. I could tell from her whole being-the dress, the blond hair like a gold waterfall down her back, the fading smirk of satisfaction- this was a woman who got what she wanted, and if you didn't just give it to her, she'd take it by force. I recognized her off of the tabloids that they sold by my favorite coffee stand.

"Miss Yang Xiao Long to see you, sir," Velvet added, sheepishly trying to do what was left of her job.

My new visitor, and hopefully new client, grabbed a chair and sat down, smirking like a cat in a house full of canaries. Town gossip had Xiao Long rubbing elbows with all kinds of ne'er-do-wells and scoundrels, especially the local Triad, so why she came to me for help instead of her friends in high places was anyone's guess.

"So, you're the great detective?" she asked with some doubt, probably imagining a grizzled hardass with a five-o-clock shadow instead of little old clean-shaven me.

"Well, it says so on my door, so it must be true," I replied, offering her a cigarette from my stash in the drawer. She lit up like she was practicing for some kind of post-traumatic Olympics.

"Forgive me for being skeptical, but the police can't do anything for me, and... and..." She leaned up close to me, and I could see her eyes were full of fear like a mouse who just ran into a corner. I just tried to focus on her eyes instead of the generous view her dress was providing me. Let's just say I remembered that preacher from when I was a kid talking about 'the valley of the shadow of death,' and I finally understood what he was talking about.

"I'm scared, Mr. Arc. Like I've never been scared before."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** And so it begins. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the private detective, and this little story idea kept growing until I had to share it with the rest of the world. Hopefully at least a few of you will find some enjoyment out of this.

Don't have a lot of notes to give right now, and I will probably use these spaces to answer any serious criticisms that people think of. But remember this is an _Alternate_ Universe, and a lot of the characters have been seen through a mirror—identical in some ways, but flipped in others.

And as one last disclaimer, I've never claimed to be a good writer, so any resemblance to actual skill or wit here is probably coincidental. But if you like what you see, leave some constructive criticism, follow, favorite, tell your friends/enemies/strangers, and welcome aboard.


	2. Chapter 2: The Thrown Gauntlet

Chapter 2 - The Thrown Gauntlet

"That's why I'm here, ma'am," I said, trying my best to sound calm and reassuring. "Now explain to me what happened, and I'll help you as well as I can."

"All right then," she said. You could see the weight being lifted off her shoulders, now that she had someone to talk to. She fished around in her purse for a piece of paper, and tossed it in front of me. It was a wedding announcement, with gold filigree and everything, for Yang and one Cardin Winchester. She was in a modest-ish sundress, while he was in khakis and a bright red polo. He had one of those smiles that begged you to punch it, and that was before you knew he was a racist bully, relied completely on his family fortune instead of doing anything meaningful with his life, and was rumored to be in bed with a few gangsters. A model example of the upper class in this city.

"He doesn't really look like your type," I admitted, trying to understand why a tough girl like her would be scared like she was. Marriage was a pretty scary business, or so I'm told, but not the 'scared for your life' kind of scary.

"He's totally my type, and I'm totally his. I want a piece of his money, and he wants a piece of my body," she wiggled her goods to make the point, and only the thought of my mother's death glare kept my basic instincts in check. "We'll tie the knot, play around for a few years, then once we get bored of each other, call in the lawyers and see how much I get out of the bargain."

"Truly, you're living every little girl's dream," I told her, sarcasm dripping off my tongue like grease off a badly-cooked bacon strip.

"They call 'em dreams because they only work when you're asleep," she pouted, her lip puffing up like a pink croissant. "But I didn't come all this way here in the rain for you to judge me, I need your help. He's gone. Vanished. And the wedding is a week away!"

"Are you sure you need me for this?" I asked, tilting my head like a dog. "For rich playboys like him, disappearing ain't so much a problem as it is a pastime. He's probably off on the other side of the kingdom having one last crazy party before settling down."

"That's what I thought at first, but I've checked. None of his West Coast friends have seen him lately, the papers are all quiet, and nobody's touched his private jet or bought any airline tickets under his name. Not even his cars have gone anywhere. It's not like him at all. I mean, he's an ass, but not the kind of ass that would do this. Something is wrong, and I need to find out what."

"That's quite a problem you've got there, Ms. Xiao Long," I whistled, reaching for my flask. I offered it to her, and she drained it dry as the Sahara. "And unfortunately for you, it may require quite a price too. My usual going rate is -"

Before I could even explain my usual prices, she pulled out her purse and dropped two thick bundles of notes on the desk. They made a smack like a book being dropped, and the stacks probably had enough pages in them to treat like a book. It was bad form to count money in front of clients, but I eyeballed roughly nine thousand Lien. More than enough to cover expenses, pay the back rent on my office, and maybe give Velvet a little bonus for putting up with me all these months. I poked the money like it was a mirage, making sure I wasn't seeing things that weren't there.

"Hopefully less than ten thousand. Consider this a start; I'll find more once you prove the first ten was money well spent."

"Definitely less than this," I agreed, sliding the money into my drawer next to the revolver, backup flask, matchbook, and empty cigar box. "I've got the feeling that there's more at stake here than just another fortune for your collection." It was true. When Raven Branwen's flight disappeared about ten years back, she left her entire share of the family fortune to her daughter, and then when her stepmother bit the big one, Summer Rose left Yang half of her estate. This dame needed another giant payday the way I needed another tragic tale of lost love. Instead of gracing my question with a response, the woman grabbed me by the suspenders and pulled my face an inch from hers. Once again, my instincts to contribute to the next generation clashed with my instincts to continue living as part of this one, but the look on her face wasn't angry or even scared. She was genuinely concerned, thought about what was still as clear as a bowl of pea soup.

"You're right, Mr. Arc," she continued, her voice low like she was afraid the dead flies on my windowsill would hear her. "As you probably know, I have... friends in the Xiong Triad, and Cardin's been helping finance some of Torchwick's ventures for a while. Roman and Junior are arrogant, but they're not stupid. They know that being at each other's throats like they've been is just wasting time and money and lives, and they figured that helping put on this wedding for their 'friends' would be a start to a ceasefire. If word of this gets out, they're going to start pointing fingers. Then they're going to start pointing guns. And I don't want to take the risk that one of them takes a potshot at one of the few things in this world I actually give a damn about."

"A Mob wedding," my face blanched like a cabbage leaf in a pot of boiling water. I've had my fair share of scrapes and crazy plans, don't get me wrong, but I knew my rightful place in the world, and it was as far from Roman Torchwick and Hei Xiong as I could get away with. "I don't suppose you have more than ten grand in that purse?"

"Maybe," Yang smirked as she stood to leave, "But you're gonna have to earn it." She swayed her hips as she left, giving me my third almost-nosebleed in less than an hour. Cardin was a bastard, through and through, but I couldn't help but envy him getting into bed with her every night. As a private dick, I've seen enough evidence that life wasn't fair to prove it scientifically at least a dozen times, but this was a little bigger blip on the radar than most, even if you remembered that neither of them were the faithful type. Once I heard the sound of Xiao Long being driven off, Velvet poked her head back through the door, looking for all the world like she expected to find my corpse behind the desk.

"I'm guessing you heard all that, Velv?" I asked her, standing up to put on my trench coat.

"Word of advice, Jaune," she gave me a smile, but I could tell her heart wasn't quite in it. "If you ever think a rabbit Faunus can't hear you, you're wrong. But a wedding with the Mob and a Triad?"

"I'm not sure I believe it myself, to be honest, but ten grand is a lot of money to spend on a practical joke." Her ears perked up, as if she had been waiting for me to say something like that.

"Y-You're not seriously considering taking the job!" she shouted, jumping a little as she did. Seeing her like that, I could completely imagine her ancestors jumping in the exact same way before fleeing their enemies.

"Past considering, I've already taken it," I said, fumbling for a match before Velvet lit my next cigarette. She had a point, though, and her point was that Yang was a predator. A smart man would follow the example of Velvet's evolutionary cousins, dive into the nearest hole in the ground and wait for this whole wedding business to blow over, but I've never been well-known for my smarts. Velvet flashed me her usual "Please be safe" smile, and I gave her my usual "If I wanted safety, I'd be an accountant" shrug. My beloved car was still in the shop, which meant I was hoofing it through this shower. I walked out into the rain, thinking to myself that this case would finally provide me some much-needed excitement.

I wasn't wrong.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** My original title for this chapter was "I Ain't Sayin' She's a Gold Digger (Even if She Is)". I like this name better for the double references it allows (both "throwing the gauntlet" as giving a challenge, and "gauntlets" being Canon!Yang's weapon of choice).Given Yang's interactions with Junior and the people at The Club in RWBY, it felt oddly fitting that she be associated with their AU counterparts. I'm not quite sure I like how she went from "I'm scared" in the last chapter to being snarky in this one, but perhaps I can attribute that to the gallows humor that we see so much of in noir.

To clarify any doubts about the future, I currently intend to post one chapter of this story each Friday. As of now, I'm partway finished with Chapter 5, so I at least have a little bit of a buffer. If I actually stick with this long enough to finish the story, maybe I'll switch things up a little, who knows?

And don't forget any of the usual fanfiction things! (review, favorite, follow, telling your friends/enemies/passerby)


	3. Chapter 3: Smelling the Orchids

Chapter 3: Smelling the Orchids

By the time I had walked to the rich part of downtown Vale, it was pretty close to lunchtime, but I was still pretty hungry for information. Winchester tended to rub elbows with the really-high class folks in town. Not just the upper crust, but that layer of greasy stuff on the crust that keeps it shiny, even though it does a number on your ticker. That kind of crowd was a little hard to track down, but Yang had mixed in some useful information with her stack of money. First of which being that Cardin ate lunch most days at a fancy joint in town called the Orchid. Just getting in the front door required knowing the right people, but I had a different plan as I snuck around the back. In a rare case of Lady Luck giving me exactly what I needed, the exact man I was looking for was leaning against the wall under an awning, enjoying a smoke break. Built like a scarecrow, he was, with neatly combed blue hair and a perfectly-maintained company suit that probably cost a week's worth of his pay.

Sky Lark would never be known for his brains or his charm, but he knew how to follow orders, and actually looked kinda distinguished when he cleaned himself up. Probably explains how he got a job as a waiter at the Orchid. Just a few months back, he called me up to help prove that he wasn't cheating on his wife, and between my detective skills and smacking some sense into both of them, I probably saved their marriage. Lark still kept going on about how he owed me, and that he'd do anything short of murder to pay me back. Well, it was time to collect.

"One thing I always liked about ya, Sky," I opened, walking under the awning and taking off my fedora. "That insatiable work ethic. Speaks volumes."

"Oh, Jau-Mr. Arc!" he jumped to attention, "It's great to see you, how have you been? The missus has been asking if I'd seen ya around. Did I ever tell you thanks for fixing things between us? I swear I'll find a way to pay you back someday." He reached into his pocket to hand me a cigarette, only to realize I was already smoking one. He brought it up to his face instead, only to remember that _he_ was already smoking too. I held up my hand to stop him before he went on another verbal sprint.

"I'm doing just fine; I've done a hell of a lot worse. Now listen here, Sky, I'd love to just shoot the breeze with ya, but I'm on somewhat of a time-table. You keep telling me how much you want to pay me back, and this is your chance to do it. Cardin Winchester's gone missing, and since he eats here every day, I figured you might know something. If he's been acting strange lately, seeing any shady characters during lunch, that kind of thing."

"Well, normally he never sits in my section. But you're lucky; the guy who usually puts up with him is here inside." Sky stubbed out his cigarette against the wall and showed me into the Orchid's kitchen. I worked in a diner or two when I was a kid, but the difference here was like comparing my father's dilapidated pickup to a '32 Packard. The cooks scrambled about like white ants, carrying dishes and pans from one station to another, only stopping to add a new ingredient or stir a pot. How they moved around without causing a ten-chef pile-up, I'll never understand. My blue-haired tour guide disappeared into the chaos long enough to grab a tray full of steak and lobster and carry it out to some waiting customers. A minute later, he came back with another waiter, with dark skin and pink-black hair, who walked over to me and took a spot leaning against the opposite wall.

"This is that PI I was tellin' you about," Sky explained, "The guy who fixed things with me and Ciel."

"The way you keep talking about him, I imagined him seven feet tall," the waiter reached out his hand to shake mine. "I'm Nadir Shiko. Pleased to meet you."

"That's the curse of my position, Nadir," I explained, copying his gesture after showing him my license. "Everyone either gives me not enough credit, or way too much." His handshake was like a company form letter: friendly enough on the surface, but you could see him dying on the inside like every other waiter on Remnant. "Now I understand that you have the unique displeasure of waiting on Cardin Winchester whenever he dines here, is that so?" Nadir put his hand to his forehead, as if it caused him physical pain to think about Cardin Winchester whenever it wasn't strictly necessary.

"Yeah, that's me. I always get the set of tables in the northwest corner of the restaurant, which happens to be where Mr. Winchester likes to sit. Says he likes the view, though I don't know why. Only thing worth seeing in that direction is the harbor, and you can't even see that through all the buildings in the way."

"He eat alone, or with friends?" I asked, trying to pull out my mental map of the city. Nadir was right on the money about the harbor. The rest of the historical district of the town was there also, but some of the newer buildings blocked off the view.

"Not sure I would call them friends, more like an entourage," Sky wriggled his nose, as if he could smell out the right answer for me. "I have to walk by Nadir's section to get to the wine cellar. Usually there's four of them. Winchester himself, one guy in a dark suit, maybe a valet or something, and two other guys, not sure what they do."

"From what I've overheard, their main jobs appear to be laughing at his jokes and agreeing with him," Nadir rolled his eyes. "They're assholes, every one of 'em, but at least they tip well. Usually, it's just those four, but sometimes they have other guests there too."

"Anyone that sticks out in your memory?" I asked, putting out my cigarette against the tile wall of the kitchen.

"It used to be a mixed bag of people, but right now, it's been the same guy that visits. Maybe twice, three times a week. Tall man, grey hair, usually in a grey shirt with black vest. Still not sure what his play is."

"Was there ever a blonde dame with purple eyes?"

"Oh, yeah! I remember a girl like that. Every other day, I'd see her, but she hasn't been here for a good two weeks. Damn shame, because she was a looker. I think she's his fiancée or something."

"She is, or so I'm told. Has Cardin been acting funny lately? Any changes from the norm?"

"Actually, yeah, he has been. It started maybe ten days ago. He and his buddies were at their usual table, ordering their usual things, and Winchester sent me to the cellar to find a bottle of Chateau Marquis. Which is funny, because he never drinks wine at the Orchid. But 'customer's always right', so I found the bottle, glasses, and a corkscrew. But when I made it back to their table, Cardin looked like he had seen a ghost. Pale skin, breathing heavy, starting to sweat—at first, I thought it was the food, but he hadn't ordered anything spicy that day."

"Did his buddies notice anything?" I asked, scribbling down notes. In my line of work, people willing to just give up information without threats were rare as blue cows, so I was going to milk Nadir dry while I had him.

"I don't think so. They were still laughing and talking when I cleared their plates, so either they didn't notice or didn't care. The maître d's been cracking the whip about 'fraternizing with our betters', so I didn't have much chance of asking Mr. Winchester myself."

"He sounds like a real peach. Was that night the only strange thing from Cardin?"

"I wish. Ever since that night, he refuses to sit in my section. Even when my section was the only one with tables, he preferred to wait. And he's not a patient man, by any stretch."

"So, Cardin saw a ghost ten days ago, and he hasn't acted the same ever since. When's the last time you saw him?"

"Three days ago was the last night he ate here. As you might guess, I don't see him outside of work. Different social circles and all that." He rolled his eyes at his own euphemism before yawning.

"That's one way of putting it, I suppose," I shook Nadir's hand, leaving five Lien and my business card behind. "You've given me more information than I ever get from one guy, but if you think of anything else, there's the number for my office." The waiter pocketed the money like it was going to disappear, and was checking my card for fine print when I heard a sickening crunch in the distance. The whole restaurant went quiet, then a commotion started building from the front of the building, like an avalanche made of people. A woman screamed, which finally snapped me out of it and set me running towards the exit. Unfortunately, the entire Orchid kitchen had the same idea, so I changed course for the same service entrance I entered at, then jogged around to the source of the panic.

There was already a good-sized knot of people surrounding the scene, seemingly ignorant of the rain, like paparazzi around the latest movie star. Most of them were either acting shocked, making cross-signs with their hands, or sneaking hits from their flasks. It took me a few careful steps and a dodged elbow, but I finally made it to the center of the throng, and the sight hit me like a freight train to the solar plexus.

The first thing to jump out at me was the totaled Rolls-Royce in the center. Before getting involved in my story, that machine probably cost more than what I made in a year. Forest green paint, with hubcaps shined like mirrors and the kind of leather interior that every cow dreams about dying and being made into. It was easy to see the interior from my angle, mostly because something big and heavy had fallen from heaven directly onto the roof of the poor thing. If that was all I saw, I would have ordered a scotch in mourning for the car.

But then I turned my attention to the dead weight now adorning the Royce's crumpled roof. It was shaped enough like a man, wearing a burgundy suit and black loafers. His hands were curled around a knife, the blade of which had been shoved well into his rib cage by the force of the fall. Peering a little more closely, I saw the CW signet ring on one finger, which told me exactly what I was afraid of.

I had found Cardin Winchester.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Up 'til now in the story, we haven't had any ships running yet (Yang and Cardin don't count for… obvious reasons). But now, at last, we have Sky Lark and Ciel Soleil. Who are together for the sheer reason that I was talking with **Diamond-Rose1** , who I know on Facebook, asked her for a random side-character to be paired with Sky, and she chose Ciel. When I posted this, I could not find a single fic with them both on the site, so I expect a ship name, another fanfic, and at least one piece of art (smut or otherwise) by this time next week! Bonus points if you make use of the fact that both their names refer to the sky in some way.

Regarding the progress of the writing, I barely finished Chapter 5 last night. The entire fic, not counting my author's notes, is past the 10,000 words mark, and roughly 3,400 of those are Chapter 5. My actual writing speed depends a lot on how well I like the words in my head. My brain works a little like a rock tumbler. I get an idea, throw it in, and after some time rolling around, it eventually becomes polished enough to display. Eventually.

Until then, I will just keep up with writing when I can, since my buffer is still technically set for the next two weeks. I feel like my ideas are slightly more concrete for next chapter, but we'll see how that goes.

So long for now! Don't forget to favorite, review, follow, and of course, tell _EVERYONE_.


	4. Chapter 4: A Long Drop and a Sudden Stop

Chapter 4: A Long Drop and a Sudden Stop

The cops took exactly seventeen minutes and thirty-six seconds to arrive at the Orchid. I only know that because one of the gentlemen standing next to me in the foyer kept looking at his pocket watch, announcing how much time it had been, and wondering out loud when the police would arrive. I tolerated his timekeeping, mostly because listening to a rich man babble in a dry foyer was still a better deal than the four waiters standing outside with umbrellas, trying to keep as much rain off of Winchester's corpse as possible. Back on the force, I had seen plenty of promising crime scenes ruined before an officer could get there, so the maître d's concern for a pristine crime scene bordered on heartwarming. Not quite as heartwarming as if he had gone out himself, instead of sending his underlings, but I wasn't about to complain. Lucky for Forensics, the rain had been steadily relenting since I talked with Sky, and the pounding flood had reduced to about an annoying drizzle.

When they finally did get there, Vale's finest wasted no time giving the wheels of justice a good hard push. Two Faunus with cameras started snapping photos of Cardin, their flashbulbs flickering like muzzle flashes from a Tommy gun. Dove Bronzewing, whose uniform now miraculously bore the rank of sergeant, walked in with a woman I didn't recognize to take statements from the diners and staff who had actually seen the big crash. I don't know what I found more surprising, the three chevrons on his shoulders, or that "Bronzewing the Bashful" was being trusted to take statements. How many years had it been since I turned in my badge? Six? Seven, already? A year or three back, I could recognize at least half of the officers on duty from either the academy or professional acquaintance. Time marched on, and it didn't care who got left behind.

Once the cameramen had spent their film rolls, the officer in charge walked past the window, and I needed two double takes and asking the gentleman with the pocket watch if I wasn't seeing things. But between the streak of pink hair peeking out from under his cap to the way he folded his hands while he talked with the four waiters with umbrellas, I could have recognized him from a mile away. My best friend at the police academy. My first partner after my probationary status. Not to mention we saved each other's lives at least half a dozen times.

"I wished to thank you again for standing out here and protecting the crime scene," I heard him say once I walked out the door. Polite to a fault, as usual. "My name is Captain Lie Ren, Vale Police Department Homicide Division."

"Of course, the fact a guy like him's captain should tell you just how desperate Vale PD must be these days," I entered the conversation with a poker face. I should have had eyes like porcelain saucers from hearing that my old friend was a police captain, but it was hard to be surprised after seeing Sergeant Bronzewing. He turned towards me, slow and cool as a glacier.

"I'll have you know, sir," Ren spoke calmly, at least until it sunk in who he was talking to. "I have served this city for ten years and—Jaune Arc? Is that you?"

"Ren! Cripes, it's been too long," I smiled as he walked over to me. He tried to shake my hand with his usual professionalism, but gave up and threw me into a bear hug like I was a long-lost brother.

"Sergeant Vasilias owes me fifty Lien, now. There's been rumors floating around the department that you were dead after that mess outside Mountain Glenn." Ren's face had a whole new light to it, talking to me. With most folks in the world, my old partner had the kind of dry soullessness that can usually only be found in old soldiers and young bureaucrats. Getting him to crack a smile, much less laugh, was an entrance into a rare and exclusive club, the only regular members I knew being myself and his beloved wife Nora.

"Sorry to disappoint you on that one. It surprised me a little bit too. And speaking of shocks, you're a captain now? How on Remnant did you manage that?"

"The way things always happen in Vale PD. Talent, hard work, and waiting for the man above you on the ladder to finally croak. What are you doing here?"

Believe it or not, Yang Xiao Long walked into my office and payed me ten big ones to find her fiancée Cardin Winchester." I normally keep a measure of confidentiality about my clients, but I trusted Ren with my life. And since he was an officer of the law, crooked though those laws may be, any information I could give him upped the chances of getting the same for me. Quid pro quo, as the lawyers call it.

"Four grand and I can help you find him," he gestured to the body, still perched on the Rolls Royce like a two-hundred pound pigeon. We both had a hearty laugh about that one. "But seriously, what can you tell me?"

"Not much at all," I reached for a new cigarette, which Ren kindly lit. "I was back in the kitchen, having a conversation with the waiter who usually serves Winchester. We heard a crash from the front, and by the time I got up here there was already a crowd gathered. For what it's worth, nobody touched anything, and these guys with umbrellas were out here for all except five minutes."

"That's good to hear. Unfortunately, protocol states an officer has to guard the body from entering the scene until the medical examiner arrives, so I'm stuck here until then."

"Gives us some time to chinwag, then. How's the kids? I haven't seen them in what, three months?"

"A month and a half, at least since we last had you over for dinner. And they're doing well. Rosa is starting school next month, and Verde will be in third grade. Nora's already complaining about how quiet the house is going to be, and if we'll ever have any more kids to fix it."

"She clearly hasn't changed, then."

"Not at all," he smiled. "And how about you? Is there a Mrs. Arc yet? I'd hate to think I missed the wedding invitation.

"The only Mrs. Arcs are my mother and 4 out of 7 sisters. I've haven't really been in a position for courting for a while now," I fed him my usual response to the question, which was not entirely false.

"You mean that financially, emotionally, or time-wise?" Ren's eyebrow rose up slowly, like a King Taijitu sizing up a meal.

"Yes, exactly," I muttered, turning to stare at the road in front of the restaurant. Before my former partner could ask me to clarify what I meant, a blue and white van with Vale PD insignia pulled up next to us before shutting down. The words "Medical Examiner" below the racing stripe erased any lingering doubts as to the van's purpose. The driver's side door opened, and I heard a voice that sounded far too cheerful for a murder scene.

"Salutations, Captain Ren!" She was short, but not enough to be worth joking about, and thinly built. She had on the white coat one would expect from a medical professional and a brown dress underneath with green accents. She had short red hair with just a hint of a curl and a pink hairbow, framing a face with wide green eyes and half a pepper mill worth of freckles. Her smile was big enough for an entire slice of watermelon, and combined with her playful salute, she looked more suited to teaching Rosa's first grade class than examining corpses. "Has the crime scene been secured?"

"It's secure, Doctor," Ren returned her salute. "My old friend and I were just waiting for you to arrive so you could retrieve the body. Nobody's moved it since the accident, and some of the waiters from the restaurant have been keeping the rain off."

"Sensational!" she literally jumped for joy as she cheered. "I love uncontaminated crime scenes! But who's the old friend?" She grabbed my hand and shook it like she was pumping water. "I am Dr. Penny Polendina, medical examiner for Vale PD. What's your name?"

"I'm Jaune Arc, private eye," I finally worked my hand out of her grip. For being so small, the good doctor had a pretty strong grip. "I was in the neighborhood when I heard some important people were dropping in." Penny giggled at my bad joke.

"Not bad, Mr. Arc! I'd love to talk further, but I really should recover this body and get it to the police station for examination. Would you and Officer Ren like to help me with the body bag and stretcher?" I couldn't quite imagine Penny getting Winchester's remains into that van all by her lonesome, so I grabbed half of the bag and followed her to the poor Rolls-Royce.

"Are you gentlemen finished with your photographs?" She asked the two cameramen. "Sensational! I'll flip the body so we can see the other side."

Cardin wasn't fat by any stretch of the imagination, but believe me, he had absolutely no future as a racing jockey. So when Penny wrapped her arms around his waist and flipped him over and into our open bag, the surprise and weight nearly made me drop my end onto the asphalt. Ren seemed as unmoved as the Easter Island statues by her feat of strength, though whether that was because he had seen her do it before, or his usual stoicism, I couldn't say.

Cardin's face looked like he'd gone a few rounds in a boxing ring, with plenty of bruises and a few cuts for good measure. His suit was easily worth ten times what mine was, but it barely looked ruffled from falling off a six story building. The only other piece that jumped out was the knife sticking out of his stomach, just below the ribcage.

"Not a whole lot of blood, for getting stabbed where he did," I wondered out loud as Ren and I set the body onto the stretcher. "Even if the fall killed him, there should be a lot more blood everywhere." It was true. Cardin's suit jacket was unblemished, and the car roof only had a trickle of blood on it.

"It is rather unusual," Penny agreed once the stretcher was back in front of her van. "Especially when you consider how the knife is placed in the first place. I wonder…"

When we turned Winchester face-up, the knife was stuck through both sides of his jacket and into his belly, like the toothpick on a gyro sandwich. When Penny pulled the knife out of him and into an evidence bag, the jacket fell open, showing us a brand new layer to our puzzle. His torso looked like a block of Swiss cheese. He'd taken a shotgun blast in the stomach from point blank range, possibly two. The chest had a score of gunshot wounds sprinkled throughout, but what really tied the piece together were the giant brutish cuts on either side of him, the slices fitting between the ribs like plates on a drying rack. Penny gasped, I felt the contents of my stomach protest a little, and even Ren looked a little pale.

"Well, I think we can rule out suicide," he concluded once we had recovered.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** "Casting" is the term I will use for how one assigns roles to characters in an AU. Looking back, casting Penny as a medical examiner was either a stroke of unparalleled brilliance on my part, or a sign I'm going crazy. Perhaps both. And the same could be said for me making Ren a police officer and former partner of Jaune's. Even in an AU, some characters just seem destined to interact one with another.

At the same time, I feel like I should spare a word towards one of the more common criticisms some people have given me for this fanfic: that of Jaune seeming "out of character" and not goofy enough. And they're not wrong, but I justify my choice on two major fronts. 1), Noir in general seems to require a competent, world-savvy protagonist, because only someone so competent has a chance of making sense of the crazy, twisted events that unfold around him or her. And 2), this story takes place roughly ten years after Jaune first joined Vale PD. When he first entered the academy, he was probably a lot like Canon!Jaune when he first entered Beacon: A little naïve, rather clumsy, and slow on the draw.

Now, though? It's been a hard ten years for Jaune. This is a man who has been kicked in the balls repeatedly by life, and he just keeps standing up. I want to sprinkle in Jaune's (and a few other folks) backstories gradually, but trust me; this story is film **noir** for a reason. (In case you don't speak French, film noir literally translates to "black film.")

To those of you curious about my writing progress, "The Clean Sweep", counting the author's notes, is now roughly 14k words in length, and I still haven't finished Chapter 6! Believe me when I say this thing has grown far beyond what I originally predicted, and it shows no signs of slowing.

Be safe until next week, my dear audience! And don't forget to favorite, review, follow me, and proclaim your love for this story to anybody who will listen.


	5. Chapter 5: A Bridge Too Far

Chapter 5: A Bridge Too Far

"I had better get back to the station and get to work," Penny closed the body bag and strapped the stretcher onto the floor of her van. "Determining the cause of death will take much more time than I anticipated. Captain Ren, it's probably for the best that you finish processing the crime scene here, which should give me enough time to find something useful."

"I'll do that, Dr. Polendina. You have my word." Ren's nod was slow and solemn, like he had just sworn an oath. And with him, he might as well have; for all his faults and shortcomings, when Ren gave his word about something, he would either kill or die before breaking it. We were going over the Orchid with a fine-toothed comb, and heaven help any lice we found.

"So, she's the new M.E. that replaced Dr. Peach?" I wondered out loud once Penny's van had left.

"She is," Ren explained, "Peach retired about two years ago. Penny is apparently the daughter of a friend of General Ironwood, which is how she applied for the position."

"And here I thought nepotism was too far for the department," I rolled my eyes. Like every other place of power in the city, the Vale Police Department was corrupt to a level that bordered on shamelessness. Everyone in the department was either on the take from Roman, the Triad, or sometimes both, and would-be whistleblowers had a nasty habit of disappearing one way or another. Like they say, every man has his price, and an officer's chances of retiring with his full pension were directly correlated with his willingness to be haggled.

But at least one rule in the VPD was ironclad, and that was that nepotism, racism, sexism, and all those other –isms were not to be tolerated. If you were willing to take a bribe and pervert justice, they'd find a space for ya. Not sure why they found racism to be bad and bribery to be good, but in my experience, the fewer morals a man has, the tighter he clings on to the ones he does have.

"I was skeptical as well, initially," Ren agreed as we turned and walked back towards the Orchid. "But after watching her work, I have had no reason to complain."

"That might be the case, Ren, but that doesn't make her any less—"

"—Eccentric?"

"She's nuttier than my grandma's pecan pie," I deadpanned. "You never tried Nana Arc's pie, but believe me when I say that's quite an achievement."

"Commissioner Port didn't hire her for her personality. I've watched her perform autopsies, Jaune. She works twice as fast as Peach ever did, and notices things I wouldn't have seen in a million years. Penny is absolutely qualified to be a medical examiner, even if she is a little nutty."

"If you say so," I shrugged as we made it back inside the doors to the Orchid. "Since there's a man dead now, I suppose this mess has gone from being _my_ problem to _your_ problem."

"True, unless I get 'mysteriously transferred' to another case." Ren shot me a wink, and I remembered the story Ren had told me one night. Like I said, VPD is as corrupt as a pork belly marinated in Spanish flu. About five months after I left the department, Ren decided he had seen enough, and was considering going to the papers with what he knew. Somebody high on the totem pole decided to send four goons to his house to rough things up and make him reconsider.

By some miracle, Ren himself wasn't home, but Nora was, and she somehow sent all four of 'em packing using only a sledgehammer she had lying around. So a deal was struck: so long as Ren would keep his mouth shut and his head down, the powers that be would allow his head to remain attached to his shoulders. And whenever Homicide got sent a case that was organized-crime-related, Officer Lie would be "mysteriously transferred" to a different murder, while the top brass brought in a monkey who didn't mind dancing to the organ grinder. I'm still not sure I'd call it a win-win situation, but at least nobody was losing.

"Well, if you get transferred, that by itself will tell us something," I hoped, flicking out my cigarette butt. "If nobody's trying to cover this up, then the list of who did it shrinks pretty drastically. Winchester's one of the richest men in town, and there's not a whole lot of people who could get rid of him who don't already have… connections." Ren opened his mouth like he was going to agree with me, but his response got cut off by a voice that was getting extremely familiar by now.

"Mr. Arc!" Sky jogged over to us, narrowly missing two elderly gentlemen and a wolf-eared dame in a red flapper dress. "I was just looking for you and…" he bowed his head and squinted at my friend's badge "…Officer Ren here."

"Sky, while I do appreciate your gratitude and attempts to pay me back, you're starting to come across like a lost puppy. A lost puppy with a nice suit."

"Really? I was going more for bein' grateful," he shrugged. "Don't you remember that one story with the ten guys who got healed, and only the one came back to say thanks?"

"He only came back once, if memory serves," I brushed the tangent off to one side. "Now, you said you were looking for me."

"Yeah, the owner figured the cops would want to look around the roof, so he gave me the key and sent me to go find the officer in charge," Sky held up an old skeleton key big enough for stirring a pot of soup, "and I figured since Jaune was here too, I'd invite him."

"Excellent idea, Sky," Ren agreed, "But I would prefer to search each of the floors of the Orchid before getting to the roof. Since nobody saw the body start falling, it could have come from anywhere."

"I don't think that would work with the windows in our offices, sir, but I'll show you anyways. Right this way." Sky led us back through the restaurant with a flourish, like we were any old guests in his section. Whoever designed the building that now housed the Orchid must have loved him some high ceilings. The whole building was six stories tall, but the first four of them were just the dining room and the kind of ceilings you'd expect from an aircraft hangar. Five and Six, Sky explained as the three of us, plus one of the cameramen Ren had shanghai'd, piled into the freight elevator, were either storerooms or offices. We couldn't get onto _all_ of them with the keys he had on him, but the ones on the northern face only had dust and some grimy jalousie windows. Maybe you could have shoved a newborn out of those windows, if you were depraved like that, but a grown man like Cardin would only fit if you fed him through a wood chipper first.

"I can see what you meant about those windows, Sky," Ren admitted while the other officer took some cursory photos. "What can you tell us about the roof access here?"

"There really isn't much of one. The elevator goes all the way up to the sixth floor, but you need one more staircase to get to the roof. And the owner got tired of everyone sneaking up there for a smoke break during business hours, so he locked the staircase. There's no other way up there, not even a fire escape."

The staircase up to the roof was thick with cobwebs. We cleared them away with the key, two nightsticks, and a flashlight, and by the time we were finished, it looked like the four of us had snuck off to the cotton candy stand. The roof itself, once Sky unlocked the door, was flat and wide, adorned every dozen yards with a vent or a puddle from the recent storm. Any footprints or evidence had long since been washed away by the storm.

"Obviously, whoever dropped Cardin didn't come up this way, based on the cobwebs," Ren observed as he cleaned the webs off his nightstick. "Replacing those cobwebs without making it obvious you passed through would be impossible, even if you could get past that lock."

"But there's no other way up here!" Sky protested. "Unless you climb up the side of the building or something."

I stayed quiet as Ren and the waiter argued. Something in this scenario just didn't add up. No way had Cardin got up there on his own, not with all those holes in him. But there's no way that whoever brought him here got through that door, or jumped down six stories without getting seen or splattered. After staring at the horizon, something finally clicked, like the last tumbler on an old safe. We'd been racking our brains about _up_ and _down_ , but what about any of the other directions?

I looked around with a new set of eyes. The Orchid was proudly located on the southeast corner of Church Street and Washington Boulevard, like a diamond set in a ring. The north and west sides were obviously out, since the roads made a gap far too wide to cross. The southern side of the restaurant was taken up by a mechanic's shop, way too short to communicate with our roof. But the eastern side was a building maybe five feet higher than our own, with a narrow alley in the way. A desperate man could have probably jumped from there to here. I craned my head over the side of the building, and six stories below, I could see a couple long pieces of lumber scattered on the alley floor, like a giant-sized game of pick-up sticks.

"Come look at this, I think I have an idea," I called to the other three, "What if somebody got here from the roof of another building?" Ren and his colleague looked at each other, then took a long stare at the alley, punctuated by a few camera flashes.

"Crossing this alley during that rain would be extremely dangerous," Ren agreed, "but not impossible. I'll go check out that other building. Albain, you stay here with Mr. Arc and Sky." The Faunus nodded once, his fox ears snapping to attention. Once Ren had made his way down the stairs, the officer turned to me and spoke.

"Forgive me if my question seems strange, but were you ever known by the nickname 'Armored' Arc?" he spoke cautiously, as if he hadn't the slightest clue how I would respond.

"Armored?" Sky's face was one of complete confusion, and the emotion looked far too familiar on his face. "The hell kind of a nickname is that?"

"The kind you get after you block a swinging crowbar with your skull and don't even break anything," I shrugged, trying to play cool. But the other officers did indeed call me 'Armored', and I had a lengthy history of taking the kind of punishment usually reserved for slapstick comedy and getting right back up afterwards. "But where did you hear that nickname? And what's your given name, while we're talking?"

"Sometimes, I hear the senior officers reminiscing about the 'good old days', and sometimes they would mention someone named 'Armored' Arc, and some story about the injuries he had sustained arresting a suspect. My name is Fennec Albain, and the other Faunus policeman with the camera here is my brother, Corsac."

"Let me guess, Fennec," I took a step closer, eying the shining badge on his uniform. It looked like the same old design as when I took the oath ten years ago. Same five-pointed star on the same shield, with the same stylized mess of shapes that supposedly represented the Beacon Building, the seat of law for the kingdom of Vale. "You and your brother are less than three months out of the academy, right? Five, at most."

"Three exactly," Fennec's face went pale as porcelain. He'd probably laughed or tutted at the rumors about 'Armored Arc', and he was finally learning that those rumors had some truth to them. "How could you tell?"

"First, your badge looks like you still care about polishing it," I smiled, and Sky Lark tried to stifle a chuckle, "Second, your badge is way too clean. None of the nicks and cuts and dents a veteran's badge will have, the kind of stuff you can't polish out. Next time you see Captain Ren, take a good close look at his badge, and you'll see a long thin line, almost a scratch, about between his badge number and the top of Beacon," I stepped closer and traced a line along Fennec's badge for emphasis.

"How did he get that mark?" the rookie asked, his attention fully captured.

"We were chasing a crew of bank robbers. They holed up in an abandoned church on the south side of town. As we got close, one of them was up in the bell tower, playing sharpshooter with a Mosin Nagant he acquired from the Atlesian black market. I saw him just in time to push Ren out of the line of fire, but the shot he fired was still close enough to graze his badge. And my hand, lucky me." I pulled up the sleeve on my trench coat and showed them both the long, thin scar on my wrist, where I had barely shoved my partner out of harm's way. Sometimes when I can't sleep, I can still remember the heat of the bullet or hear the report bouncing off the church's stucco. My first real brush with danger in the line of duty, but certainly not my last.

"That's incredible!" Fennec looked at his badge like he could see the future marks his career would make on it. "Do you remember any other tales from working with Captain Ren?"

"It's not whether he knows them or not," Ren called out from the other roof, "it's whether or not you're ready for them." My former partner and Fennec's brother were standing on the roof across from us, and based on the amount of time it took them to get up there, nobody got in their way for very long.

"Did you find anything of interest?" Fennec shouted to his brother, the wind tousling his ears like an over-eager girlfriend.

"Come over here and see for yourself," Corsac picked up a long board and slid it over the gap between buildings. Ren grabbed two more boards, and soon the two of them had fashioned a crude gangplank between the buildings.

"I'll just hold them steady for ya," Sky gulped loudly enough for Ren and Corsac to hear. "I've never been much of a heights guy, especially with no hand rail and a drop like that." Between the width of the planks and Sky's white-knuckled grip, the ramp was stable enough, but the winds gusting six stories above the street gave everyone a few tense moments and some muffled curses. After what felt like way too long, the four of us began pulling back the boards, while our favorite waiter gave me a nervous salute before walking back inside the restaurant.

The roof was just as black as the Orchid's, though it was substantially more cluttered. One of the wooden water tanks was being replaced, and the lumber being used was neatly stacked next to the stairs leading down into the building proper. The four of us took a few quiet minutes to search around the construction debris and take pictures, but the only thing out of the ordinary we found was a mostly dry matchbook from some tavern called Turney's. I'd never heard of the place myself, but the brothers assured me of two things: It was well in Hei Xiong's territory, and it was certainly too classy for the average construction worker. I recorded the number on the back anyways, just in case I was in that part of town and needed something stiff.

"Should we assume this is how our perpetrators got onto the roof of the Orchid?" Fennec looked around the roof, sniffing the air. "What's the rest of the building like?"

"In order from the bottom, it's a ballet studio, a jeweler's workshop, and a store that specializes in exotic varieties of tobacco, followed by three stories of apartments," Corsac counted on his fingers as he spoke, while his tail wagged slowly, like it had gotten stiff and needed stretching. "The staircase and elevator are centralized, so anybody could have climbed up without the storeowners seeing them. And with three exits, getting out would be even easier."

"What was the lock to the roof like, brother?" Fennec massaged his ears, which were still tense from the roof-crossing.

"You remember the lock on the gate of Old Lady Verdant's place growing up?" the brothers both snickered at the memory.

"I'll take that to mean that security up here isn't exactly ironclad," I lit another cigarette, which struggled in the wind for a minute before finally staying lit. "But at least that gives us a rough idea how this could have happened."

"I agree," Ren finally entered the conversation. "Our bad guys took Cardin, or what was left of him, through one of the back entrances, up the stairs, past the lock, and onto the roof. They put together a bridge from this roof to the Orchid using the wood from the construction. They took Winchester to the edge and gave him a good firm shove. While everyone's distracted with the body, they leave the way they came, knocking those boards into the alley in haste. They hit the streets and disappear. But why go through the effort of climbing onto the Orchid's roof when you're already six stories up?" The captain pulled out his own cigarette, and the Albain brothers had a race to see who could light it for him the fastest. Fennec won by at least a second.

"Visibility?" I guessed, practicing blowing a smoke ring while we walked down the stairs. Let's just say it's a good thing I'm a detective and not a professional smoke blower. "Whoever did this didn't just want Cardin dead. They wanted everyone and their grandmother to know he was dead."

"There's a short list of people who could make that happen, and even shorter when you think of whom would profit from it. Rumor is that Winchester's an associate of Roman Torchwick, so he would only want it if Cardin tried to screw him on a deal or something like that. Junior, perhaps?"

"I rather doubt that one. Yang was set to marry him in a week, and she tells me that Roman and Xiong were planning on using the wedding as a way of starting some peace talks between their organizations. Offing him sounds more like trying to start a war instead of stopping one. Maybe somebody unrelated put a hit out on him?"

"And risk Torchwick finding out you bumped one of his backers? Maybe somebody in this town has the balls for that, Jaune, but it's certainly not me." We had just barely walked out the front door of the place, whose nameplate proudly declared "The Ellis Building", when Sergeant Bronzewing ran up to his captain, breathing heavily. I supposed he either sprinted over to us, or maybe Dove's nickname got changed from "The Bashful" to "The Beefy" while I was gone. It certainly would have been fitting.

"Captain Ren!" he gasped, more worried about his words than his breath, "We just got a call on the police band. Dr. Polendina wants you back at HQ, as quickly as you can. She says she's found something."

"I'm on my way," Ren stamped out his cigarette before walking to his squad car. "Fennec, Corsac, you stay here and keep working the crime scene. Arc, you're coming with me."

"Yessir, Captain," I muttered sarcastically as I followed. While taking orders was never my strong suit, I was curious enough about Penny's examination to swallow my pride. But what could she have found in so little time that just couldn't wait?

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Eventually, I'll get around to showing off everyone's backstories, but today belongs to Lie Ren. One of noir's central, overlying themes is the corruption of power, so the best path to give Ren while still being likable was that of the "honest man forced to do dishonest things." I'll get into his story a little more in the beginning of Chapter 6.

As I am still trying to finish Chapter 6 (which has required much more research and effort than previous chapters), I may as well give out the "In Case of Emergency" rules if my buffer finally gives out. When/If I have a chapter to publish, I will do so on a Friday. If you stop by one week and the new chapter isn't there, come back next week. (Or simply follow the story if you want instant information.)

Today, "The Clean Sweep" has passed over the 16k word mark, and at least five thousand of those are in Chapter 6. I'm considering splitting them up; maybe I'll make a poll to see what you guys think. The extra length would certainly help me get some added views.

Really, though, after all these weeks of posting this, I still need your help in getting the word out. Follow/favorite, leave a review, tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell anybody who asks. Next chapter, we'll be having a nice long conversation between Jaune and Ren…


	6. Chapter 6: Heart to Heart

Chapter 6: Heart to Heart

Ren was never much of a music person, so we rode in silence for the first few minutes. My former partner could win "The Quiet Game" against a marble statue, so it fell to me to initiate any conversation.

"What are they saying about me, I wonder?"

"You've got to be a little more specific, Jaune. Who is saying what?"

"When we were waiting for you on the roof, Fennec knew enough to call me 'Armored Arc'. And I know he wasn't part of the force when I picked up that nickname. Somebody had to tell him, and I know it wasn't me. So, what are they saying about me back in the precinct?"

"Mostly just tall tales. Those bank robbers in the church. The mess with the Hullum Gang. And how you beat Yatsuhashi Daichi that one year at the precinct's charity boxing tournament."

"How I beat him is simple. I got lucky," I rolled my eyes. Yatsuhashi Daichi was a lieutenant back when I knew him. I never learned his actual numbers, but he was easily past seven feet tall, and wide enough at the shoulders that he went through doors sideways. He usually got called to disturbances for sheer intimidation value; when a man that big picks you up with one hand and politely asks you to calm down and come with him to the station, people listen. And if reason didn't work, Daichi had a left hook like a wrecking ball and a right uppercut that could literally knock you out of your shoes. It was a poorly kept secret that he was on Junior Xiong's payroll, and I'm told he left about five years ago to work for the Triad full time. He's a Straw Sandal now, as they call them in the Triad, and probably makes more in a month than he did in a year on the force.

"What about how I left? What are they saying about that?"

"The _official_ reports say insubordination. There's a whole paper trail saying you never liked taking orders, and that incident in Campbell Park was the straw that broke the camel's back. Commissioner Port decided that was enough, and he sent down the line to _request_ your resignation." Ren's voice was dry as a sermon, but you could almost feel the italics at the words _official_ and _request_. I just shook my head, trying not to think about Campbell Park.

"That's the _official_ reports. What do the gossipmongers say?"

"Depends on which one you ask. Some of 'em say arrogance, that you asked for a bribe that was more than you deserved. A couple of guys say Campbell Park traumatized you, and you got discharged so your head could heal up. Others say you chickened out, and a few guys think you got religion, but nobody really believes them."

"And what do you say?"

"Nobody ever asks me. Believe it or not, Jaune, I'm not considered much of a conversationalist." We both chuckled at that one, the moment dying like it took a slug through the brainpan.

"Well, if they did ask you, what would you say?"

"That you did what you had to do."

"Interesting answer. Truthful, while at the same time not saying anything of substance. You ever think of a career in politics, Ren? Heaven knows you'd do better than the jokers in office right now." Another round of smiles. "You could have done the same," I changed the subject, staring out the window of the squad car at the passing storefronts. "Port has a nice big desk; there was plenty of room for your badge and gun next to mine."

"I thought about it, believe me. And if I was still single, I probably would have done it too. But after those men came to my house, and _threatened my wife_ …" Ren's knuckles were turning white on the steering wheel, which for a stoic like him bordered on shouting. "Nora was in the front room dusting when they came, and Verde and Rosa were in the backyard playing. Yeah, she fought them off with a sledgehammer, but what if it had been reversed? Nora out back and the kids in the front? You did what you had to do after Campbell Park, and I'm doing the same."

"And Nora doesn't mind when you won't look at yourself in the mirror at night?" To this day, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I pursued that line of questioning with Ren. Maybe it was the two-martini breakfast talking, or the frustration that somebody had pushed my client's fiancée off a six story roof, and I hadn't the foggiest idea who it could have been. Or perhaps I was a little jealous of him, that he had a smiling wife and two kids to come home to, instead of an antique chess set and two bottles of liquor.

"Nora doesn't like the situation any more than I do. Maybe she resents me for it, I'm not sure. Possibly the kids, too. But so long as they live to a ripe old age while they resent me, I'll learn to deal with it." There was a leaden finality in his voice, like a man who knew his plane was crashing, and rather than worrying about what he couldn't fix, he'd resigned himself to enjoy the view before it jumped up at him.

"I can't wait until the kids are teenagers, and you have to give them those talks about honesty and integrity. I'll save you a drink at my office."

"And I'll teach them to be better people than their old man, and never go into law enforcement. Some of us have to think about more people than ourselves, Jaune," the captain's voice was finally rising. A smart man would have held his tongue, just like a smart man would have handed Xiao Long her ten grand and told her where to shove it.

"And some of us don't get to marry our childhood sweetheart and live happily ever after like in a damned storybook, Ren!" The brakes of the squad car screeched as we hit a red light.

"That's really what you think?" He was almost shouting now, quiet enough that the other cars wouldn't hear, but certainly loud enough to tell he was not happy. "Look, I'm sorry about what happened to Pyrrha, but just because things didn't work out between you and her does _not_ mean that nobody else in the world is allowed to be happy!"

I snapped. I snapped and I launched a left jab square at his jaw. Ren was always the faster of the two of us, so he had plenty of time to send me a counter cross with his right hand. But that last shred of civility we shared stopped both of our hands, less than an inch from each other's faces. We stayed like that for a long moment, and we might have stayed like that forever if the traffic light hadn't finally turned green. Five minutes passed in silence before I decided I would have to start this conversation too.

"I'm sorry about that, Ren," I opened my window, hoping to clear the air both physically and emotionally. "I've been under a lot of stress lately, I crossed a line I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry for that."

"I forgive you, but I should apologize as well," Ren's poker face had returned, but his voice still had a twinge of melancholy, like pouring a dash of lemon juice into a dark beer. He swallowed slowly as he opened his own window. "Bringing up Pyrrha like I did was a low blow. You didn't deserve what happened. I'll call it even if you do."

"Deal." We both lapsed into silence until the car was parked in front of the police station.

"For what it's worth, it was a lovely funeral," Ren added before we got out of the cruiser.

"I wouldn't know. I didn't attend."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Oh my, that escalated quickly. I wrote the main body of this conversation in a single, two-hour sprint of ideas that just _flowed_ , without needing to stop and ask what to do next. I might be proud of it, because I haven't really tried to put too much emotion into anyone just yet, and now this. The chapter this time is just a little shorter, because my poll about splitting the chapter into two was decided by the impressive margin of one vote. As in, only one person voted, and they wanted the split, so they're getting their wish.

Mainly, I'm glad to split this one. Even with the split, Chapter 7 will still be the longest one so far, and a lot of information is getting dropped. Plus, it allows me some time to think through Chapter 8 without panicking about a deadline. I think Hideo Kojima (maybe it was him, not sure) once said in an interview that a delayed game would be good eventually, but a bad rushed game remained bad forever. I think that logic can apply to this fanfic as well.

And on the writing progress front, this author's note takes the entire fic up into the 18.1k mark, and the Microsoft Word document I write in is at least 33 pages long, with regular margins. Easily one of the longer things I have ever made for fun, but still rewarding.

Now, you all know what I'm going to ask of you (like/follow, review, tell everyone), but I would like to crave another boon. I need some kind of art, preferably of the fan-made variety, to serve as a cover to this tale. I like the playing-card-sticking-out-of-the-sea-like-a-shark-fin just as much as the next guy, but it would be nice to have something that actually conveyed something about the story. So if you're interested, send me a link to your art, and if I approve, it will become the cover of "The Clean Sweep", and I will tell everyone who reads the fic of your generosity and artistic talent. Who knows, maybe I will even allow you a little creative input as to a detail of the story…

 _Obrigado_ , as they say in Portuguese. _Muito obrigado_.


	7. Chapter 7: The Quirky and the Dead

Chapter 7: The Quirky and the Dead

We walked into the department headquarters silently. The heart and soul of Vale PD, or what passed for a heart and soul these days, was a massive block of granite, painstakingly carved in the Beaux-Arts style. It was a noble sort of look, which clashed with the shady corruption within like wearing stripes and polka dots. One of my old high school teachers was an architecture junkie, and she always went on how architecture wasn't just a way of decorating an exterior, but a reflection of the emotional state of the place that built it. Beaux-Arts, she said, was made of tradition, nobility and pride in the details. This city couldn't build something like that today if it tried; the optimism just wasn't there. Deep down, we knew we didn't have enough to be proud of to make more Beaux-Arts, and now we tried to make do with lesser styles.

"About time you got here! I was getting worried!" Penny scolded us out of our quiet fugue. She was dressed the same as when we saw her last, only her bow was missing, replaced with a pair of glasses with at least six different filters and magnifiers attached.

"We got stuck in traffic, Doctor," Ren took off his hat as he apologized. "But we made as good of time as we could. Now, what did you find for us?"

"Right this way!" she gestured down a hallway with far too much glee, like she was showing us a new painting instead of a corpse. We followed her down the hallway, just stopping long enough for me to swipe a visitor's badge from the front desk. It was a little bit jarring, walking through the station to the ME's offices. The hallways hadn't changed a bit in the seven years since I left the force, but the people left me suppressing my urge for double takes. All of the junior officers were faces I didn't recognize, and all the men and women I knew as juniors were in the higher ranks of their divisions. Reese Chloris was second in command of the motorcycle divison. I saw Arslan Altan's bright white hair at the central booking desk, and Neptune Vasilias's blue mop at one of the parole desks.

Most of the bigwigs and division heads were out doing their jobs, but I could pick out plenty of names by the plaques on the doorways. Octavia Ember, Special Victims Unit. Police Armorer, May Zedong. Nolan Porfirio, O-Crime Division. Bolin Hori, Highway Patrol. Brawnz Ni, Detective Bureau. Fox Alistair, Housing Bureau. Coco freaking Adel, of all people, Homicide Division. And next to the stairs down to Evidence were the names of Nebula Violette and Dew Gayl. Looks like everybody I knew was moving on except me. I tried not to look at most of them, but I could feel a few of them looking back at me, mostly trying to make sure they were seeing things straight. Reese in particular looked like she had seen a ghost, and given my history during and after the force, I felt like a ghost sometimes.

The morgue hadn't changed a great deal since I left. The lights had given up trying to fill their spaces, and instead focused their energies directly above the important stuff, like the examination tables and Polendina's desk. Everywhere else in the room languished in a dingy twilight, with only the rack of lockers on the south wall standing out like polished steel catacombs. Behind those doors, the dead awaited their judgement, though "Saint Penny" didn't care so much about the sins you committed as what traces they left on your remains.

On the middle of the three slabs was all that was left of Cardin Winchester. He had already been stripped of his nice suit, and now only a strategically placed white washcloth covered his nakedness. The suit itself had been separated into several evidence bags, which had been carefully stacked on the lower levels of a cart next to his head. The top of the cart held a few dozen tiny jars, each one holding a gently used bullet, and a small tray holding what possessions Cardin had on his person.

"That's a lot of bullets," Ren observed dryly. "I'm surprised he didn't rattle as we carried him."

"This isn't even all of them," Penny frowned, but only for a moment. "By counting the entry wounds, Mr. Winchester was shot between 24 and 30 times." We both gave a low whistle at that one. Somebody _really_ wanted to make sure this guy was dead.

"Any idea about the calibers involved?" I looked closely at the cart.

"Somewhat of a mixture. So far, I've seen 9mm, .45 APC rounds, some .32's and .38's, and even a few .357 Magnums. Plus the two shells of 00 buckshot in the stomach."

"Someone really hated this guy," Ren picked up one of the bullet jars and held it up to the light. "What about those slashing marks on his rib cage, Doctor? Any ideas on those?"

"Actually, I was waiting for you to arrive so you could help me with an experiment," Polendina grabbed both our sleeves and led us into a side room. With the light on, the room had a pig carcass, the kind you'd find in any butcher shop in the kingdom, on its side, tied to a table in the middle. On the wall next to the door was a perplexing array of weapons on a wooden rack. I could see a few hammers, a dozen knives, two swords, three ice picks, and an honest-to-God chainsaw, plus a few more miscellaneous tools. The other walls had the kind of brown smears that usually meant a substandard job of wiping away blood.

I was starting to get _very_ concerned about the medical examiner. Ren was getting a little pale-faced as well, to which I leaned over to him and whispered _Nana Arc's pecan pie_.

"Let's play a game," Penny picked up a fireman's axe with her usual overjoyed grin, before holding out the handle to either of us. "I need one of you strongmen to try chopping the pig at an angle, like you're going between the ribs. Can you do that?" Wordlessly, Ren nodded and took the axe in his hands.

"So Dr. Polendina, what's up with those brown smears on the walls?" I tried to make conversation while Ren chopped. Between how silently he worked and his expression like a Mardi Gras mask, I couldn't tell if he would have been underwhelming or terrifying to meet in a dark alleyway.

"Dried blood," she explained matter-of-factly. "In addition to testing with weapons here, I sometimes use this room for blood spatter testing. It provides some excellent data, but cleaning isn't very fun. Also, have you ever tried refilling a pig carcass with blood? It's very messy."

"No, I can't say I ever have," I mused as Ren handed me the axe and wiped some sweat off his brow. "Do you fire guns here too, for evidence?"

"I'm submitting a budget proposal for a ballistics room. Commissioner Port won't let me fire guns down here, and the other officers don't like it when I bring the pig carcasses up to the firing range. Especially if I filled them with blood."

I can't claim to be any great connoisseur of axes, but Penny's axe had some great balance to it, and the blade felt heavy and sharp. But even with such a great tool to work with, making cuts exactly along those ribs was tricky. Ren and I needed a perfect angle to slice at, otherwise you'd wind up striking the ribs themselves instead of cutting between 'em. And if you got a _really_ wild swing going, breaking the ribs entirely wasn't an impossibility. Once Ren and I had finished our stint as the kingdom's least effective butchers, Penny started going over our handiwork with a magnifying glass big enough to play tennis with. She withdrew a pair of scalpels from her white coat and started cutting pieces out of each of our cuts, her fingers flying from one to another like a puppet master, if their puppet was a mutilated pig carcass; obviously not a show for small children.

She carried her samples over to a small desk holding a microscope. She sang to herself has she compared the slices of flesh to some pieces of Winchester. I didn't recognize the tune, something about not having strings or something like that, but it was a nice, upbeat song. If only she wasn't singing it during an autopsy.

"Sensational!" she finally shouted before turning to write some notes. "Thanks to your help, I can now confirm that those slashing wounds were caused by an axe, and were inflicted postmortem."

"But that still doesn't tell us why they did it. Winchester was already past dead from lead poisoning, so cutting him up further wouldn't help anything," Ren wondered out loud as he turned off the lights and closed the door to the testing room and its pig carcass.

"Might be the same idea as dropping him off the roof: Making an example for somebody," I offered. "But that only makes sense if the axe marks meant something else too. There any groups in town that use axes as their calling card?"

"Don't Hei Xiong's soldiers usually carry axes? And they are known to mutilate bodies to intimidate people," Penny placed her hand on her chin as she thought.

"That's true, but if Yang is really friends with Junior, why would he gruesomely murder her fiancée? She told me that the triad and Torchwick's people wanted this wedding to happen as a way to start peace talks."

"Speaking of murder, I almost forgot something else strange! Look at this!" Penny literally jumped as she realized what she forgot. Walking over to Winchester's remains, she held his hand, lifted his entire arm into the air, then let it flop lifelessly back to the table.

"Yes, he isn't moving," Ren agreed flatly. "Dead people usually don't. Why was this strange?"

"Because the time of death makes absolutely no sense! Rigor mortis usually sets in between two and six hours after death and wears off after 36 hours. 24 hours as a bare minimum. But now look at these bugs!" The doctor grabbed two specimen jars from her cart and held them in front of our eyes. One of them had a small patch of goo that appeared to be made of a hundred tiny spheres, while the other had a single maggot, about half the size of a grain of rice, preserved in alcohol.

"Flies often lay their eggs in corpses, Doctor. Why is that maggot so important?"

"Because it's the only one I could find on the body!" Penny set down her jars long enough to grab Ren by the shoulders and shake him like a maraca. "Blow flies usually find a corpse within _minutes_ , and the eggs hatch about ten hours later. But so far, all I can find are eggs and one maggot. Do you understand what that means?"

"Someone hid the body somewhere after they killed him," I snapped my fingers as the dots in my mind finally connected. "You said the rigor mortis means he's been dead at least 36 hours, but the bugs say it's only been 9 or 10. Whoever whacked Winchester sealed the body somewhere the bugs couldn't get to him, and only took him out a few hours ago so they could bring him downtown and throw him off a roof."

"That's what I love to hear! Our people finding the answers!" A new voice entered the room after knocking at the door to the morgue. Ren snapped to attention, while Penny smiled and waved. Whether she was in civilian clothes or her police blues, Coco Adel cut an imposing figure. She towered over most women at six feet tall, and most of that appeared to be in her legs. Her hair and eyes were a very common shade of brown, but she always had a prizefighter's swagger in her step, and being made head of Homicide hadn't dulled it in the least.

Her uniform was completely free of wrinkles and dust, with the gold leaves on her shoulders shining like twin lighthouses, and either she'd had her uniform tailored or had been working out. Her only accessories were a pair of sunglasses the color of cold molasses, a police-blue beret she had custom made with the VPD logo in front, and a thoroughly abused Rolex watch.

"Major Adel!" Ren bowed a little in greeting. "Dr. Polendina was just showing me what she's determined from Winchester's autopsy."

"And I was out doing some research about the rest of his life. How 'bout we compare notes?"

"Actually, we were just about to do some more examination on Mr. Winchester's personal effects, if you'd care to join us," Penny gestured to her cart. "But first, let me show you my axe!" She put one arm around Coco's midsection and led her back to the testing room, explaining the results of her autopsy like a debutante describing her wedding plans. Penny's head barely reached Coco's shoulder, but the two of them were distracted enough for me to shoot Ren a confused look.

 _What's she doing down here?_ I mouthed slowly and clearly.

 _She's head of Homicide. She can look into whatever case she pleases_ , Ren mouthed back.

 _Great. She always this nosy?_

 _Only when it's a case that interests her. Or if she's bored. Or when there's a good chance I'm being "transferred"._ I never did like how noisy that diner was I worked in during high school, but it taught me to be pretty good at lip reading, so I suppose even the darkest, greasiest clouds have their silver linings. Our conversation was cut short as Polendina and Adel came back.

"…And that's why I need a new ballistics room next to the labs," Penny concluded her train of thought by snapping her fingers. "But now that you're up to speed, let's look at those personal effects!" The good doctor skipped over to her cart and carefully set the tray down on an empty examination slab. "For a rich man like Mr. Winchester, he didn't have a lot on him when we found him," Penny admitted before holding out the first item from her tray. "First, we have this signet ring, complete with CW monogramming." Coco put on a pair of latex gloves before taking the ring.

"I've seen pictures of him dating back to his eighteenth birthday wearing this ring," she spoke as she held it up to the light. "And the font matches his stationary, calling card, and everything else he owns that's monogrammed. Which is a lot of stuff, might I add. What else do we have?"

"Might as well address the Goliath in the room. The knife that was holding Winchester's suit coat shut is shaped like a classic broken-back seax knife, but the blade is a type of Mistrali folded steel, and the hilt is antler of some kind. Also, there's a design of some kind near the cross guard. Look at it," Penny gingerly removed the knife from the evidence bag and angled it so it caught what little light was to be had in her lab.

It was certainly a high-quality knife, and the materials alone pushed the price tag into the triple digits. The handle was bone white, with brighter streaks mixed in like almost spoiled milk. From a distance, the symbol looked like a ball with three specks in it, but looking closer, the specks were three bear's heads, enclosed in a perfect circle carved into the blade. It was the symbol of the Xiong triad, and it never meant anything good in my experience.

"So Junior's involved," Coco frowned, "Though I never did understand why he chose this as his symbol."

"It's a traditional thing," Ren pinched the bridge of his nose as he prepared to explain. His parents immigrated to Vale from Mistral before he was born, but my ex-partner heard plenty of stories growing up. "If you look at the characters for the word 'Triad', they translate literally to 'Three Harmonies Society', the three harmonies being the heavens, earth, and people. As a result, the triads make extensive use of triangles and multiples of three in their symbols. I heard somewhere that the representation of the Xiong family is a black bear, so they used that. Three bears, united in one ring, or one purpose."

"I'll have to remember that one, Captain," Coco winked, while Ren sighed. The joke back when I was on the force was that Adel would flirt with anything with a face and a pulse, and the latter was negotiable. Even the fact that he was happily married, with two kids, wasn't enough to stop her. "Did the victim have a wallet on him, Dr. Polendina?"

"We found his wallet in his suit pocket. Burgundy color, with his monogram in gold leaf on the corner. Still has his driver's license, a picture of Yang Xiao Long, 156 Lien in bills, and a membership card for the Double Gold Rooster Club."

"I recognize that wallet design," Coco frowned like she'd just stepped in something objectionable with her favorite shoes. "It's last year's Ash Jenkins men's line. Shoddy construction, cheap leather, and not an original design idea since the Baroque days. Not surprised Cardin would buy one."

Every family has their family business, and the Adel name was synonymous the world over with high fashion. Like her brother and sisters, it was assumed that Coco would make her mark on the fashion world, but apparently she couldn't draw or sketch to save her life. She had enough of a trust fund accumulated that money wasn't an issue for her, and she joined the force more out of thrill-seeking than any sense of duty. But she either enjoyed the job or enjoyed the praise, and she rose through the ranks like a bubble in a glass of soda water.

"Of all the critical details, of course you're the one of us to notice the brand of the wallet," Ren pointed out.

"Hey, when you're raised by a family of hammers, you get good at finding nails. And what do we have here?" the major picked up a small red book. The thing had obviously seen some abuse, and actually reading the words on the cover needed holding it up to the light at just the right angle. " _Signal Book, Royal Valerian Army_ ", Coco read aloud. "And the inside cover reads _'Issued to Corporal Sanguinus Winchester'_."

"General Ironwood has one of those books on display in his study," Penny said, recognition sparking behind her avocado eyes. "He said that a copy was issued to each of the communications personnel during the war."

"Makes sense. Sanguinus was part of the Army Signal Corps. Even earned the Silver Star for bravery during the Chorus Offensive."

"So why does Cardin have his father's old army manual, and why is only one page dog-eared?" Ren asked, craning his neck for a better view.

"The dog-eared page is the start of the section on Morse Code," Penny turned the book so we could all get a better view.

"So he was trying to learn Morse?" I raised an eyebrow. "Not exactly a usual past time for a rich kid."

"Yeah, we're tracking down his valet and a few of his friends for questioning, see if they know anything about where he's been. Speaking of which, Jaune Arc? What are you doing back here?" she lifted her sunglasses and squinted, as if she wasn't sure if I was a trick of the light or flesh and blood.

"I heard you finally got around to cleaning out my desk, so I figured I would stop by and see if you found anything interesting," I shook her hand over the table, careful not to touch the body as I did so.

"Jaune was hired by the deceased's fiancée to find him," Ren explained warily. "He was at the Orchid talking with one of the waiters when Winchester... well…"

"Say it," Coco smirked. It was a rather sadistic smirk, the kind you wear when you hear your worst enemy injured themselves in some ignominious manner. "You know you want to."

"I don't want to, Major. It's clichéd, in poor taste, and I think Jaune already made that joke at the crime scene."

"Which joke? Dropped in?" Penny asked as she tilted her head, not unlike a dog. Coco couldn't answer for two minutes, she was laughing and slapping her knee so hard. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a bruise.

"Wow, I needed that today. Back to work. If Mr. Arc has information, you should have taken his statement at the restaurant. Unless he's here for interrogation, in which I've got to wonder why he's here and not in holding."

"The captain brought me in as a visitor," I showed my credentials, "Just like any of the college students or interns you let watch the good doctor operate."

"I can't remember ever letting anyone watch a case this high-profile," Coco was getting impatient, and the laughter that covered her face was sliding off like a mask. "There's justice to be done, and the last thing we need are outside parties contaminating things."

"I was there at Campbell Park, Adel," I let my real emotions show for a brief flash, like seeing the floors move past in a glass elevator. "If you want to talk about justice, find some other sucker to talk with. Or would you rather wait to talk until after Ren gets 'mysteriously transferred' to a case that doesn't involve a known associate of Roman Torchwick? Or a weapon belonging to a Triad member?"

"If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now," the mask finally slid off, but the emotion underneath looked more like defeat than anger. "Usually when a case involving those two comes up, one of the 'concerned third parties' speaks directly to Commissioner Port, who informs me that the captain should be transferred to another case, and I inform him accordingly. But so far, I haven't heard anything from anybody. And with one of the more well-known men in the city dead, you'd think they would be moving a little faster to cover things up."

"How long does it usually take for the 'concerned third parties' to talk with Port?" I raised an eyebrow at her description of protocol. I never quite mastered that slow, deliberate raise that Ren's eyebrow had. Mine was more like a light switch flicking on and off, but the meaning was still there.

"Not this long. And the fact that both that knife and those axe marks point to Junior and his family just make the delay even stranger. Still doesn't give us a who or why, either. I'm certainly not in the Organized Crime Division, but I always thought the two gangs were in a stalemate. Could the Xiongs finally have something to gain the upper hand, and this is how they're declaring war?"

"Still kind of a strange move, declaring war just after agreeing to help plan a wedding," I reached for my cigarettes, but Penny saw my hand and cheerily shook her head. I couldn't imagine her kicking me out for smoking in her exam room, but I also didn't imagine her having enough blades to stock a butcher shop in her back room. "Xiao Long must be a better liar than I thought."

"Maybe she wasn't lying to you," Ren offered, sliding on another pair of latex gloves and opening Winchester's cigarette case. "Maybe she honestly thought Junior wanted to put on a wedding and talk peace. She's just a friend of theirs, probably not even a Blue Lantern. Why would they tell her about their big plans?"

"Very true," Coco nodded, picking up Cardin's watch to give it a closer examination. " _Maybe_ she's got closer ties with them, but for all we know, she's just a bored rich girl slumming it with gangsters to feel dangerous. Can't say I approve." The hypocrisy in the major's statement went tastefully unmentioned. But as I thought about it, Yang and Coco had a lot in common. Two rich girls, both joining a dangerous group for the thrills, at least at first. Both were unrepentant flirts, who were far too used to being in charge of the situation. Coco had some fine legs attached to her hips, while Yang's ample bosom had her outgunned by at least double. I had the sneaking suspicion that if the two of them ever met, they would be either best friends or sworn enemies within the hour, one extreme of the spectrum or the other.

"Given with whom I've rubbed elbows over the years, I'm really in no place to judge," I admitted with a shake of the head. "I still remember that one undercover job on Patch where I-"

 _"_ _Attention, please, attention,"_ the intercom in the room crackled to life, the voice sounding like they were speaking through crumpling paper. _"If Jaune Arc is in the building, please report to the front desk, you have a message from Velvet."_

"Ooh," Coco's Cheshire-Cat grin reappeared as if it never left. "And just who is Velvet? Sounds like a cutie."

"She's my secretary, and our relationship is strictly professional," I turned to leave, while Ren stripped off his gloves to escort me out. "Besides, she could easily do better than me."

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that," the major waved goodbye as the door closed.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Right now, I think Penny may be my second favorite character to write for, just based on her dialogue and the "testing room" I gave her in the morgue. I still have the occasional bout of laughter imagining her filling a pig carcass with blood and dragging it to Vale PD's firing range. Coco, too, just feels strangely right as a police officer, and I don't know why. Also, hopefully seeing how large this chapter was will buy me some slack for splitting my chapter in two last week. Hopefully, I won't have too much need to do it again.

Hoping to finish Chapter 8 on time, but I've currently hit one of those tricky patches that befall all good authors. And me. If I may paraphrase the great Raymond Chandler (one of the great legends of detective noir), _"The faster I write, the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them."_ That big convo with Jaune and Ren back in Chapter 6 took all of two hours to type, for comparison.

Eventually, though, I will continue this great and crazy work, and once it finally ends, you fine people will be able to tell all your friends about how you were there in the beginning! Until then, don't forget to follow/favorite, leave a review, make some art, or even just tell a friend about "The Clean Sweep".

I do appreciate it. Truly, I do.


	8. Chapter 8: Gin and Talking

Chapter 8: Gin and Talking

"You should come over for dinner," Ren offered as we took the morgue's stairs two at a time. "Nora and the kids would be glad to see you, and I'm even cooking tonight."

"What are you cooking?" I asked, figuring I'd at least taste the bait before I bit into it.

"The only thing I can cook," he admitted with an embarrassed grin. At our old precinct, Captain Ren was famous for being a disaster in the kitchen, but there was one thing, and one thing only, he could cook to absolute perfection: buttermilk pancakes. He even made his own maple syrup, though we always joked that the main ingredient was angel tears or something.

"Sounds like a plan," I agreed as we made it up to the front desk. The dame sitting next to the police station's switchboard was petite enough to remind me of Tinkerbell and some other fairies. Her hair was pulled into a bun the same color as her eyes, a dark blue like the ocean on a cloudy day. She was the right mixture of colors to simply fade into the background, and if it wasn't for the porcelain brightness of her skin, she would have done exactly that.

"Jaune Arc," I tipped my hat and introduced myself to the operator once she finished her call. "I heard you had a message for me? From Velvet?"

"Of course," she rummaged for a second before handing me half a sheet of paper with the critical details written on it. "Her exact words were, and I quote, 'Yang found out about Cardin, and is here at the office, in tears. She needs to see you immediately. Also, she already drained the office bottle of gin.' If you'd like a cab, there should be one outside the building." I shook my head. That bottle was Ranger Gilby's Extra Dry Gin, aged for 5 years, and my client had just drank the entire thing in a single fit of hysteria. I couldn't be too mad at her, I suppose, since she had just found out her fiancé was dead, but that was some good gin, and bottles like that are hard to come by on a private eye's money, assuming you counted Yang's ten thousand dollar payday as an outlier.

"Did she get to the backup bottle?" I winced, not sure I wanted the answer.

"I only know the message she gave me," the officer admitted, adjusting her badge. "But I know I did hear a woman crying in the background of the call, not the same one who talked to me." I nodded my thanks, tipped my hat, and walked outside, where the clouds had parted enough to look like a decent evening.

"Looks like I'll have to postpone that dinner, Ren," I apologized, "but duty calls, and all that jazz. Say hi to Nora and the kids for me."

"I will," Ren leaned through the passenger window of the taxi to show the cabbie his badge, and to tell him to bill the police department for my ride. "Don't do anything stupid, Jaune. This case obviously goes deeper than we can see right now."

"Something stupid? Me? You must be thinking of some other Arc," I shook his hand farewell before turning to the driver. "Take me to the Luna Building, on Miles Boulevard, and get me there two hours ago."

"Not a problem, Mr. Wells, just let me get the time machine in gear," he winked before pulling out onto the road. I replied with a simple smile as I watched the streets flicker by. Well-read cab drivers aren't easy to find these days.

One perk of the police paying my cab fare was that I could afford to be a little more generous on the tipping than my circumstances usually allow. You could practically hear the cabbie's happiness in the way his tires squealed as he left. I didn't waste any time watching him leave, opting to take the stairs two at a time once I became convinced waiting for the elevator was a waste of effort. My office is on the fifth floor of the Luna Building, so I was in for a climb. I slowed down once I hit the fourth story, just so I wouldn't have to barge into my own office gasping for breath. I could hear a woman sobbing inside, and Velvet's voice trying to comfort her.

I opened the door just barely enough to slide inside and remove my hat and coat. The side of my office's antechamber opposite Velvet's desk had a beaten-up leather sofa, and Velvet and Yang were both sitting on it while Yang cried into my secretary's shoulder. Since Velvet's other shoulder and the front of her blouse were already almost transparent from moisture, clearly they had been there a while. I had to step in before things got embarrassing.

"Miss Xiao Long," I started before deciding that warmth was more important than professionalism. "Yang, I'm here. I'm sorry for your loss." The socialite responded by letting out another sob, releasing her grip on Velvet, and latching onto my shoulder before pulling me down onto the sofa. Velvet took advantage of her opening and jumped out of our way seconds before I landed on what used to be her seat. A long minute passed before my client composed herself enough to speak.

"H-How did he die?" she whispered. Looking at her from so close, I could see the redness in her eyes from crying, as well as a touch more blushing than usual, which could probably be explained by the smell of Ranger Gilby's on her breath.

"Are you sure you want to know all the details? I almost lost my lunch at the crime scene, and I used to do this for a living."

"All I know right now is what Lisa Lavender said on the radio," Yang began. "That he fell from the roof of the Orchid and landed on a car. Police haven't released yet whether it was foul play or an accident or suicide or anything."

"Well, I can answer that one easy enough. But are you really sure you want to hear it?" I thought she was going to start sobbing again, but she dried her eyes on my sleeve before looking at me. She gripped me a little tighter, which had the just-maybe-intentional effect of pulling my arm into that vast crevice of her dress. At first, I was worried she would see me blushing, but the almost-widow seemed too tipsy to notice. Velvet shot a dirty look in our direction, and to this day, I'm still not sure at whom it was aimed.

"I need to know, Mr. Arc," she spoke slow and in a measured fashion, as if she was afraid of starting to cry again. "I may have been marrying Cardin mostly for his money, but part of me felt… something… for him. I certainly didn't want him dead, not like this."

"Especially not before you married him, so you could inherit something of his," Velvet muttered. The statement was so out of character, I had to double check it was the same actress who usually worked in my office and played the role 'Velvet Scarlatina'.

"Well, obviously," Yang agreed, and the ladies traded another pair of dirty looks.

"I'll explain, then. When we found Cardin, somebody had unloaded a shotgun into his stomach, shot him a few more times in the chest for good measure, and then tried to slice up his ribs. Then they held his suit coat shut with a knife and dropped him off the roof. It was definitely foul play, maybe the foulest I've seen in a long time." Yang's eyes got wide, but she kept quiet, which I took as my cue to continue.

"Obviously, somebody wanted him dead, and they wanted to make damn sure everyone knew he was dead, otherwise they would have dropped him in the harbor instead of downtown. As to who did it and why, there's still a lot of information missing. And our agreement was that I find him, and I've done exactly that. If you'd like to see him yourself, he's in a drawer at the Vale PD morgue, until either his case gets solved or somebody in high places pays enough money to make all this go away."

"First, my exact words to you were that I needed to find out what was wrong," Through the tears and the liquor, I could finally see a glimmer of the old Yang, the one who barged into my office to offer me this job. It took letting her be a snarky little vixen to do it, but luckily my ego is about as resilient as the rest of my body. "And if somebody did all that to Cardin, then something is still _very_ wrong. Besides, I did some digging as to your usual rates, and I definitely overpaid the first time I came in here. So my offer is five thousand Lien, plus expenses, paid once you can tell me who killed him and why."

"Glad to see you've learned the pitfalls of paying in advance," I winked, glad for a little verbal sparring after my long day. "But if you want me figuring anything out, I need some information from you. About the last week, and about what the two of you were doing. Now I don't suppose I know you well enough to see if you're lying to me or not, but if you really want Cardin's killer found, I need you to level with me."

Yang didn't respond with words, at least not at first. She simply closed her eyes and breathed deeply, an action I felt as well as heard, thanks to the precarious position of my arm. I wanted to look her in the eyes, but their closed position meant my eyes needed to wander elsewhere. My arm felt like it was buried in pillows, the warmest, softest pillows my arm had ever felt. That basic, animal, unprofessional side of my nature would have loved nothing more than to sink into them like quicksand and forget about everything else. If Velvet hadn't been there, I might have done it, too, but I heard an audible click from somewhere else, and my vision changed like a new film slide moving into place.

All of the colors had changed, in this new vision of mine. I didn't see Yang's hair like sunlight in the light of the office. Now, her hair looked a bright red, so bright that every fire truck I'd seen and every cherry I'd ever eaten looked like a pale imitation. With another click, her dress, too, had gone from a gold brick to the color of fresh blood. I couldn't see her eyes, but I could still remember their unique shade of green, like freshly cut grass after the first spring rain. Rationally speaking, I knew it was still Yang Xiao Long sitting next to me, but that wasn't who I was seeing by a long shot. It had been almost seven years, and I still couldn't get her out of my head. After everything she did, and everything I had done, she haunted me like a desperate shade around a graveyard. The only woman I could say with confidence I truly loved. One more click, and her chest moved again, filling her lungs so she could speak. I couldn't stand to hear her voice, not right now. I jumped out of my seat, saying her name as I did so.

"Pyrrha," I spoke with a surge of effort. The world clicked once more while I spoke, and my vision finally snapped back to normal, like a spell being broken. My client was her regular golden self, and the source of the clicking was Velvet trying to coax a flame out of her dilapidated cigarette lighter.

"What was that, Jaune?" Velvet asked, one of her snowshoe ears cocked in my direction. "It sounded like you just said 'Pyrrha'."

"Yeah, I heard it too," Yang agreed with a confused nod. Xiao Long probably wasn't used to men willingly rejecting her embraces, so me literally leaping out of my chair must have come as a little bit of a shock. I stared blankly, racking my brain for an explanation, and found one after what felt like a year of searching.

"I was mumbling, sorry. I said it _appears_ that your lighter is out of fuel, Velvet," I put on my best poker face. "You can use mine from my office; let me get it quickly. I'll be back in two shakes of a Beowulf's tail." I drifted back into my office and rummaged for my lighter, but not before pulling my backup flask out of its hiding place for a quick swig. Grimm take me, it had been a long time since I'd seen her like that, taking the place of some other woman. I thought I had poured enough layers of liquor and regret over that particular story, but maybe I was due for a few more. Pyrrha Nikos may have metaphorically stabbed me in the heart and left me for dead, but no amount of knife-twisting on her part had been enough to remove my feelings for her. I wondered if this was how drug addicts feel towards their crutch.

By the time I had returned with the lighter, Velvet and Yang both had cigarettes out waiting for me. The three of us lit up together, and as the smoke began to fill the room, the socialite finally started spilling her guts.

"We've all heard that old superstition about how the groom and bride shouldn't see each other before the wedding," she began, "so I can't really give you a perfect timetable. Especially since he never did take me on that yacht of his."

"Just tell me what you can, Yang," I turned my body back towards her, hoping to discourage any more cuddling. "What sort of yacht does Cardin have? Was he sailing before he disappeared?"

"I don't know the fancy nautical word for it. It's got some really big sails, white hull with blue accents, a cabin with a queen-sized bed, and the other rooms are pretty big too. Last month he told me he got an outboard motor installed just in case the winds were no good."

"You sure know a lot about his yacht, for never having been on it," Velvet mused as she scribbled notes on a piece of paper. I hadn't thought far enough ahead to write anything down in that conversation, but foresight like that was why I was grateful that the bunnygirl stuck around me. I had been wondering the exact same thing, anyways.

"With how much he talked about it, I could probably sail the thing myself, from all the info he'd told me. He was taking the thing out for a sail every week, before he… you know."

"Any idea where he went so often?" I traced a map in the air with my cigarette as I talked. I was never much of a world traveler, but Vale didn't have much in the way of nearby landmasses to sail to. You had Patch just west of the kingdom, and Vytal to the northeast, but everywhere else was too far out or reach, especially if all you had to explore with was a pleasure yacht. Even if you just sailed down the coast of Sanus, the nearest city worth mentioning was a long ways away.

"No idea. Like I said, he never took me, and he didn't say much about where he went either."

"Where is it docked? Down by the marina, or did he have some other place for it to stay?"

"The marina down by the harbor, only half a dozen blocks from the Orchid. They have a fenced-off area of the pier where all the _really_ nice boats with rich owners get to dock. Great place to show off, or so I'm told," Yang flicked a lock of hair over her shoulder, as if she was trying to demonstrate the pier's potential.

"Good to know, but I think that's enough questions about the yacht. What can you tell me about what he was doing this past week? Even if it's just the time you spent talking about the wedding."

"I'll tell you what I can remember," Yang couldn't get close enough to me to give another giant pillowy hug, so she contented herself with a long drag from her cigarette. "He got back from another sailing trip about two weeks ago. We had dinner at The Freelancer Club two days after that, and we went on a walk through Winchester Manor's grounds the next day."

"So you weren't with him ten days ago when he was eating at the Orchid?" I asked, trying to keep the order of events straight in my head. It was probably for the best that Velvet was taking notes.

"I haven't eaten there for a few weeks. I got sick from their shrimp tartare, and I get a little queasy just thinking about it," she shuddered a little at the memory, hard enough to set off another chain reaction of jiggling in various places, like the world's most alluring set of wind chimes.

"When's the last time you saw Cardin, then?"

"Two days ago. He was visiting me at my penthouse downtown, the Dunkleman Hotel. We were planning some last minute details about the honeymoon. Where exactly we wanted to go, what to do when we got there, usual stuff. He was a lot more anxious than normal, and he was carrying an automatic with him."

"Did he usually carry a gun?"

"Sometimes, but not like he did that day. He was constantly reaching for it in his jacket pocket, checking the safety, looking over his shoulder… like he was expecting someone to come after him."

"Did he say anything about it?"

"I tried asking him about it, but he just blew it off, said he had too much espresso and it was affecting his nerves. I could tell he was lying, but he still wouldn't talk. And I even tried some of my best 'relaxation techniques' to get him to calm down." Yang folded her arms under her sizable chest, just in case there was any doubt as to what her "relaxation techniques" entailed.

"And I'll just assume your 'techniques' usually worked on him like a charm." Yang didn't bother gracing my question with a spoken answer, just a raise of her eyebrow. Her eyebrow raise didn't have the slow sinuousness of Ren's brow, but there was a brazen confidence to hers, like the difference between a walk and a strut. "Sorry, stupid question, but it never hurts to be sure. I'll take that as a yes and keep going. When they found his body, he had a little red book on his person. Did you ever see him with it?"

"Was it really old and worn? I sometimes saw him looking at a book like that whenever he was waiting for me or something. Did you see what it was about?"

"It was an old Army signal book. Morse Code, semaphore, basic codes, that kind of thing."

"Makes sense. I think he told me once how his father was a signalman with the Chorus Offensive, but that's all he told me. I got the impression Mr. Winchester didn't like talking about the war too much."

"I've heard stories about what happened in the Chorus Offensive," I added as I failed again to produce a decent smoke ring. "Can't say I blame him. There were worse places to be during the war, but not many of them."

"Really? And where did your daddy serve, if it was so much worse than Chorus?"

"Blood Gulch," the room got a sudden chill as I answered my client. The war had been an absolute horror show, and none of it was as horrible as the battle of Blood Gulch. That much was undisputed by historians, in spite of everything else they argued about. Survival rates measured in the single digit percentages, and even those who survived were often scarred beyond recognition. My dad made it home with all his arms and legs attached, but the scars on his mind were as deep as anyone's. I was young when he left for the war, so I don't have a great deal of memories of who he was, but I hold on to the ones I do have like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood.

"Wow. I'm sorry for your dad," Yang said quietly. "I've only heard rumors about what really happened out there, but if even half the rumors are true—"

"The one about the snowshoes is completely fake," I stubbed out my cigarette and reached for another. "But maybe I should get to my next question. You told me that Cardin had assisted Torchwick in a few financial ventures. Can you give me any more details about that?"

"As far as I know, their relationship was just money. Roman would need a loan for a new gambling hall or some equipment for a robbery, and Cardin would pony up the funds. Roman would sign a contract to pay him back with interest, and he would do it. I don't think Cardin ever moved any goods or did anything illegal for him, though."

"Except for funding an criminal enterprise, of course," Velvet cut in quickly as she reached for a new sheet of paper for her notes.

"Captain Obvious," Yang saluted mockingly.

"Lieutenant Sarcasm," Velvet returned the salute.

"Ladies, if you're really going to fight, you have to give me a few minutes to sell some tickets first," I held out a hand towards each of them. "Now Yang, can you think of any enemies you've got or that Cardin's got who would be willing to kill because of this marriage?"

"None that he ever told me about. As for me, the worst any of my enemies would do is spread a few nasty rumors about me, or maybe insult my dress. Typical debutante stuff. I don't have any homicidal enemies."

"Not even from hanging out with Hei and the Triad?"

"I don't even _do_ anything with the Triad! The worst I've ever done at The Club is run up a big tab, flirt with some Red Poles, or have a few too many Strawberry Sunrises. And I always pay off my tab the next week, so it's hardly worth killing my fiancée over."

"That's one of the details I need to ask you some more about, though," I leaned a little closer, lining my eyes up with hers to keep the truth from escaping. "The knife that held Cardin's jacket together had the three bears engraved on the blade, and his rib cage was cut up using an axe. And you've seen how many of Junior's people carry axes." Yang's face turned pale as a corpse, and she covered her mouth with her hands in shock. Either Xiao Long was the best actress I had ever worked for, or she was well and truly surprised.

"The 49's, you mean," Velvet cocked her head, her ears swaying with the motion like palm trees.

"49s?" I squinted. "I don't think I've ever heard that term used before."

"It's a numerology thing," Velvet explained. "Four times nine is thirty-six, the number of oaths you swear to join the Triad at the lowest rank. The Mafia's equivalent term is _soldato_ , if that makes any sense to you." I nodded my agreement to her before she returned to her notes and began scrawling in the margins.

"That doesn't make any sense," Yang finally spoke, the tears leaking out once more. "Junior himself agreed to the idea. Told me he was looking forwards to peace talks with Roman once this was over. But if he ordered that…" She finished her sentence by wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my shoulder.

"Now hold on a second, Yang," I placed my arm on her shoulder, anything to help ignore how close our bodies were. "All I know for sure is what I saw of that knife and the axe marks. Just because he's dead doesn't mean Hei ordered it. Maybe somebody found one of those knives and decided to start something. Or maybe one of his underlings is acting out of turn, wants to keep the war going. That's the thing with circumstantial evidence. You look at one way and it's as damning as a written confession, but you take two steps over and it's a whole other story." She sniffled once, then went silent, as if my next words would decide if she kept crying or not. "Can you think of anyone who would want to see the fight with Roman go on?"

"Describe to me the knife you found," she asked gently. Once I explained the details to her, complete with a crude sketch of the thing, she started to smile again. But it wasn't the kind of happy smile we're all used to. This was a cat smiling after it found a defenseless mouse. "I recognize this kind of knife. The handle is made from the antler of a rare kind of deer native to Mistral, where the Triads originated, and Junior only gives them to his high-ranking people. I've seen all of Hei's inner circle with one, plus some of the White Paper Fans, Straw Sandals and Red Poles. It's a good number of people, but there's only a few of them who would think of something like this. Hmmm…"

"You think you could catch some rumors about this without anybody getting suspicious?"

"Please, most of them already think I'm just a dumb bimbo," Yang's smirk had a tinge of hope to it. She'd spent the better part of the day in shock at her fiancée's death, and now she had a way to strike back. "And most of the ones who know better would still give me the combination to their grandmother's safe if I asked them nicely enough."

"Heaven only knows why they'd think _that_ ," Velvet muttered. Yang retorted by sticking out her chest at my secretary and rising to her feet. There was a new confidence in her movements, one that was sullied only by the half-bottle of gin disrupting her movements.

"You're not thinking of driving home like this, are you?" I steadied her before she could sway too far to one side.

"Of course not. That's why I have a chauffeur. But one last thing, Mr. Arc," she turned at my doorway, "If I find out who did it before you do, do I still have to pay you that five thousand?"

"I'll burn that bridge when I get to it," I snarked as I waved goodbye. Yang blew me a kiss, gave her hips one last wiggle, and disappeared into the hallways of the Luna building.

"I thought she'd never leave," Velvet yawned as she rose to her feet. If Yang was swaying like an oak tree in a gale as she left, my secretary standing looked like a reed being shaken by the wind. I caught her just as she tripped over the carpeting, one of her ears nearly poking my eye out. A few moments studying her face told me everything I needed to know: the unusual lack of coordination, the slight unfocusedness in her eyes, the blush in her cheeks, and most telling of all, the smell of Ranger Gilby's Extra Dry Gin on her breath.

"Velvet, are you—did you?"

"When Yang got here and found your office bottle, I was worried she might hurt herself," Velvet blushed a little more. "So I thought quickly and I… well…"

"You had a few drinks yourself to keep Yang from downing it all," my eyebrow rose of its own accord. "Is that your story?"

"We were toasting his memory. It was the best idea I could come up with to stop her. I'll buy you another bottle, once I get the money." Whether or not Velvet actually _felt_ sorry, I couldn't tell, but she at least had the common decency to _look_ sorry.

"Let me fix that now, actually," I walked back to the desk in my office, pulled out a smaller stack of bills from Yang's envelope, and placed them in Velvet's purse. "This should be enough for all the back pay I owe you, plus all the help I'm going to need from you tomorrow. Speaking of which, you should probably go home and get some sleep."

"You're not having me do anything illegal, are you?"

"No worse than what I usually do on a job," I shrugged as I wrote down a list of instructions for the girl to follow before meeting me tomorrow.

"That's hardly very comforting," she squinted as she folded the paper and placed it in the pocket of her blouse.

"All right, we may be treading into a few gray areas," I admitted, helping Velvet to the door and into the elevator. "But it will help us catch the killer, and so long as we don't murder anyone, that's still a net win for justice, as far as I've concerned."

"I don't think that's how it works," she hiccupped as we descended. "And I can walk home just fine."

"Maybe you can, Velvet, but I'm a little on edge after what's happened today. I'd rather call you a cab, while I have the money for it."

"But this morning you were barely scraping by,"

"Ren paid my cab fare on the way here. So I'm taking the money I would have spent then, and getting you a ride home. And if you really want to keep the cycle going, find someone who needs it and pay for their cab too. Good night, Ms. Scarlatina."

"Good night, Mr. Arc," she smiled as she stepped into the cab. I handed the driver some money and watched as they sped off towards Velvet's neighborhood. It was past closing time anyways, so I contented myself with locking my office up and walking home. It was amazing how much things could change in a day. This morning, I was fighting the creditors away with a baseball bat. Now, as the sun descended below the Valerian skyline, I had a mound of cash locked in my desk drawer, and a mound of trouble to go with it. It was starting to sound like what my old man would always say: "In for a penny, in for a pounding."

That war shook him up good.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** By now, you're surely used to the basic flow of this story, and I can safely say we have moved past the first act of the story. I'm not sure if my writing of Yang and Velvet's emotional state is as believable as I would like, but they are both a little drunk, so you can blame that for any major incongruities. To say nothing of that Pyrrha hallucination. I don't want to give too many details about what happened just yet, but believe me when I say there's a reason Jaune is a callous, snarky S.O.B.

Under my current life circumstances, my buffer has all but vanished, and since real life is giving me plenty of trouble right now, I can't guarantee chapter 9 will exist when we need it to exist. I'll do what I can, but there's an old proverb in Yiddish that translates to " _Man plans, and God laughs_." Freaking story of my life, these past few months. And for the three of you who care about word count, my master document of the story is at 23,631 words, at the time of posting this chapter.

To keep things interesting, though, I have a little contest for you all. As you may have noticed so far, Jaune _really_ likes his gin. But why gin, instead of all the other good spirits in the world? It's a reference, believe it or not. (I don't mean the fact that his favorite variety is Ranger Gilby's, but that is another reference. I mean why gin in general?) The first person who can tell me why, whether through a private message or a review, will get a gift. The winner can message me one single yes/no question about my story, and I will answer truthfully. Also, anybody who feels like making me some fanart to use as my story cover will get a question too.

Hopefully, the winner asks me a question that I have planned the answer to already, otherwise this may get complicated. If nobody answers me in a week, the contest closes with no information being given out. Until then, remember to favorite, follow, review, and tell everyone about "The Clean Sweep". You can brag how you knew me before I "got famous".


	9. Chapter 9: The Mourning Papers

Chapter 9: The Mourning Papers

It was a quarter past eight when Velvet met me on the corner of Church and Washington, across from the Orchid. She was wearing the same sort of blouse as the day before, though it was now joined by a set of brown slacks with suspenders, sensible shoes, a newsboy cap that somehow concealed her ears without a problem, and a pair of sunglasses thick enough to double as welder's goggles. The way she winced at every passing car told me how she was feeling.

"You're late, Velvet," I gave her a light hug as she crossed the street. "Now, I expect that kind of sorry behavior from myself, but I thought you were better than me."

"With how I feel right now, you're lucky I'm here at all," Velvet's voice was just above a whisper, and she pulled me close to hear her clearly. Thankfully, not so close that the other pedestrians tried passing comment. "Do you ever get those hangovers where everything you hear hurts you somehow?"

"Once in a blue moon, yes."

"Now, imagine that hangover when you have ears like _mine_ ," she pulled off her hat to make a point. Having seven sisters, I was absolutely no stranger to the concept of "hat hair". But "hat ears" were something completely different. Velvet's normally tall, delicately bent ears were crooked, creased, and matted close to her head. They looked like they needed ironing, or perhaps some kind of a steam bath.

"Ouch," I winced in sympathy. "I can only guess what that feels like."

"I rather doubt it." A fire truck turned on its siren as it turned the corner, and Velvet's face looked like she would prefer the sweet release of death over hearing another one.

"Okay, maybe I can't imagine it. But I can at least buy you breakfast, help take the edge off that hangover."

"At the Orchid?" she tilted her head as she took my arm. "Is this part of your case, or are you just feeling absurdly generous?"

"A little of both," I admitted as we crossed the street. "Cardin saw something out the window here that made him panic. Knowing what's outside that window might just give us a hint as to who offed him."

It was a warm enough day that I only had my usual shirt and pants, plus a vest to keep any leftover chill from penetrating. In my various pockets, I had my .38 S&W Model 10 and my hip flask, plus the usual accoutrements one would expect of a private eye. I respectfully tipped my hat to the doorman and found the hostess at her podium, either psyching herself up for the latest rush, or calming herself down after it.

"Reservation for Jaune Arc and friend, please. And if you can set us up in Mr. Shiko's section, I'd greatly appreciate it," I asked politely. The hostess nodded and showed us to a booth in the northern side of the building and left us a pair of menus before leaving. We removed our hats, and Velvet started poring over her menu while I looked around the room pensively. The main hall of the Orchid could have held a flying trapeze act on the ceiling, with nobody on the ground the wiser. The ceiling itself reminded me of pictures I'd seen of the Sistine Chapel. Lots of cherubs, pictures that an eagle would have trouble seeing all the details, and gold leaf running between them like veins and arteries.

"The prices here," Velvet muttered under her breath, and I couldn't blame her. My tastes can hardly be called frugal, but I could have probably eaten for an entire day for the cost of a meal at the Orchid. Maybe two, if I planned for leftovers. "Do you have any recommendations?"

"For a hangover, your best bets are coffee and something hearty, with plenty of grease. I speak from plenty of experience on that one. I've never eaten here myself, so your guess is as good as mine."

"Good morning, and welcome to the Orchid. My name is Nadir, and I will—Mr. Arc?" our waiter did a brief double take as he recognized me as the man who interviewed him barely a day before. "To what do I owe the pleasure? And who is your friend here?"

"My secretary, Miss Scarlatina," I gestured towards Velvet, and she waved in greeting.

"She's your _secretary?_ " from Shiko's face, one would think I told him she was a freshly summoned demon, in talks to purchase my soul. "Wow, I'm in the wrong line of work." Velvet blushed at that comment and tried to hide it by coughing into her napkin. My secretary was nowhere near being called ugly, but I had the suspicion she hadn't been told she was beautiful quite often enough growing up. One of my father's old war buddies once told me that women need to be told they're beautiful at least once a day or they start to wither, like unwatered flowers. I always took his advice with a few grains of salt, but the way Velvet's ears went from creased and drooping to standing straight up, maybe he was on to something.

"What a coincidence, so am I. Believe it or not, Nadir, we're here on business, but I didn't see any reason not to get some breakfast while we were here."

"Well, I can certainly help with that," he smiled professionally as he produced a notepad from his vest. "What can I bring you to drink?"

"Some coffee and a glass of orange juice, please," Velvet tried to smile, but her hangover decided that was too much frivolity for her current state of mind.

"And I'd like coffee, plus a dirty martini. Ranger Gilby's Gin, if you have any open." By the time Nadir was back with the goods, we were ready to order. Velvet decided on a chorizo omelet with bell peppers and mushrooms, while I went with the Eggs Benedict, swapping the poached eggs for the fried stuff, and a pair of blueberry pancakes on the side. Sleuthing works up a powerful appetite, you see.

"So," Velvet spoke after draining half of her orange juice, "how does getting breakfast here help you figure out who killed Winchester?" I delayed answering her until I had taken a few sips of coffee. I was never much of a "bean fiend", but the Orchid had a quality brew. Strong enough to grab your attention, but polite enough that you didn't get whiplash, like a bouncer in an upscale bar. In hushed tones, I gave her the condensed version of what Nadir had told me yesterday.

"At first, Winchester always insisted on the same table in Nadir's section," I explained. "Then something happened, something that scared him good. Scared him enough to refuse to sit at that table for the next week. If we could figure out what spooked him like that, it might just tell us something about why he was killed."

"How are you so sure the two events are related?"

"Call it a detective's hunch. Everyone I've spoken to has given me the impression that Cardin was an arrogant jackass, at the best of times. So if he could see something out that window that could shake him up that much, I say it's worth some investigation." I swirled my martini as I thought. It wasn't helping generate any ideas, but perhaps it would help me figure out how the Orchid's bartender was able to mix the gin, vermouth, and olive juice so well that they showed no signs whatsoever of separating.

"Fair enough. But having the right angle to see would be critical. How are you going to figure out which booth was Cardin's? Or where he sat in the booth?"

"That's the blessedly easy part. I ask our waiter, who put up with the man for untold months."

"What are we asking me about?" Nadir asked as he brought his cart of food to a stop in front of the table. Credit where it's due, I've seen spiders less coordinated than Shiko as he turned, balanced, and placed our various plates in front of us.

"Which of these tables was Winchester's former haunt?"

"The one two booths behind you, Mr. Arc," he gestured with his pen before taking the cart and leaving. I rubbernecked as subtly as I could, hoping against my better judgement that the table I needed was empty. Seated there was a giant of a man with short black hair and a pale woman with antlers sticking out of her forehead. "And the gentleman there is sitting about where Mr. Winchester used to sit."

"I suppose we'll just have to wait and eat, hope they leave," Velvet said as she took her first bite of omelet. Nadir bowed his head and retreated before I followed her lead.

When I was young, my mother said that if nobody was talking during a meal, that was because the food was good. And you could have cut the silence with a knife as Velvet and I ate. My fried eggs were perfectly cooked, with the yolk still runny enough to soak into the English muffin. The ham was tender enough to render my knife completely useless, and the muffin soaked up all the errant juices into one beautiful, slightly soggy dream. The pancakes were merely above average, but once you've had Lie Ren's famous flapjacks, everything else is a letdown by comparison. In between bites, I could see Velvet's lashes fluttering and eyes rolling back in her head a little, so she was clearly enjoying her meal also.

"Feeling any better, doll?" I asked once I had drained the last of my martini.

"I feel better," she nodded and pushed her plate away. "Not quite good, but better. But the others are still there."

"I was afraid of that. Any sign of them leaving?"

"Nadir just brought them another pot of coffee, so I would say not for a little while."

"Mr. Rainart likes meeting potential clients here for breakfast," Nadir whispered as he recovered our plates. "He loves the cherry crème Danishes. Anything else I can bring you?"

"Just the check, please," I waved him away. I was about to ask Velvet if she had any ideas about how to get the big guy out of his seat when I noticed her face. She squinted at the space behind me, then cleaned her glasses off on a clean corner of her napkin.

"It can't be," she said to herself. "It's not bloody possible,"

"What isn't possible, Velvet?" Her skin was starting to get pale, and her eyes looked so much like saucers I was considering getting another coffee.

"That man sitting at Cardin's table…"

"Yeah, he's big as a truck. I don't know what his mother fed him, but she must have bought it by the wheelbarrow."

"That's not what I meant," she pouted slightly. "I think that's Hazel Rainart."

"I should probably remember that name, but I can't remember why he's important," I tapped my chin as I thought. I _did_ recall seeing that name somewhere, but I couldn't remember why I saw it. I just hoped it wasn't something criminally related. With a man that big, I could probably empty my Model 10 into his chest, and he would still have enough time to crush my skull like a moldy tomato before his brain got around to telling him he was supposed to be dying.

"He's a photographer," Velvet explained, her excitement leaking through her professional exterior like blades of grass growing through the sidewalk. "He first started in the business by covering the war effort, and moved on as an artist once peace was declared. He's had works shown in the Congressional Library, the Smithson Museum, even the Imperial Gallery in Atlas." I gave a low whistle at that last news. Supposedly, the last Czar of Atlas founded the Imperial Gallery to show off the superiority of Atlesian artists to the rest of Remnant, so the fact that they would willingly show a foreigner's photography was high praise indeed.

"I think I've seen a few of his pictures in the _Valerian Double Standard_. He certainly has some skills."

"Some skills?" An actual vein pulsed in Velvet's temple, if only for a moment. "The man's a _genius_. You're not a photographer, Jaune, so you don't realize that he does things in his photos that are supposed to be _impossible_." Velvet started to breathe a little more heavily, and I had the feeling she would have started pacing if we weren't sitting down already. "Oh God, I can't believe it, Hazel Rainart is real, and he's in my restaurant, and I'm supposed to be working, and I look like a mess, and my ears are crooked, and I'm still a little hungover, and—"

"If he covered the war, I'm sure he's seen far worse," I tried to reassure her, though stopping her runaway thought process made me feel like a man with a rope trying to hold back a locomotive. "And if he does stuff that's impossible, maybe he'll give you some tips if you ask nicely."

"You mean, you'll let me go talk to him? Really?" Velvet's panic at looking foolish had just made a hairpin turn, and her face now resembled that of a giddy schoolgirl. One of her idols was in the same room as her, close enough to spit on him.

"You still have your camera, right?"

"Of course I do, you asked me to bring it," she tapped twice on the brown box on her waist that held her camera. "What if Hazel asks me to see it? I _knew_ I should have polished the lenses yesterday."

"All I need to keep moving on Cardin is knowing what he could have seen from that window at his table," I reached over the table to place a hand on her shoulder. "If you can get that for me without getting yourself in trouble, we certainly have enough slack in our schedule for you to talk shop with Hazel for a few minutes. Just remember that window, and we do still have a killer to catch."

In the interests of being frank, I didn't understand a thing of what I overheard Velvet and Hazel talk about for the next fifteen minutes. She spent the first minute in a sort of nervous introduction, then the two of them got down to brass tacks. I recognized a handful of the words they were using, like _aperture_ , _shutter_ , _development_ , and _picture_ , but everything in between could have been in ancient Sumerian for all I knew.

Eventually, Velvet pulled out her camera and took a photo through the window, after which Rainart borrowed it to show her how it was done. The camera looked like half a pack of cigarettes in his frying pan hands, but he snapped pictures as easily as it was part of him. A few more minutes, and my secretary thanked him profusely and walked back towards me, ready to face the rest of the day. I left my payment and tip on the table and stood to leave, tipping my hat to Hazel as I did. The giant camera man smiled and mimicked the motion, and even his antlered friend gave me a slight wave. It wasn't until we had gotten outside that Velvet had calmed down enough to speak to me.

"So, what did you find over there?" I asked.

"Lots of things!" She almost skipped as she replied. "Mr. Rainart was telling me about this new technique he's working on where you use the camera's maximum—oh, you meant the window, didn't you?"

"I meant the window, Velvet."

"Oh. The only building I could see through the window was part of the side of the Philharmonic's new theater, and that didn't even have any windows. That, plus the old bell tower on the train station close to the harbor. It made for a rather lovely shot, with the sun still half-risen."

I turned to look at the theater. Whoever was in charge of the façade facing the Orchid sure loved gargoyles. The whole building was painstakingly carved like a cathedral, and you could probably spend hours looking at the sculptures and still find new details to contemplate. Climbing the thing would have only been possible for the very skilled or the very foolish, but even then everybody on the street would have a perfect view of you going up and down. But the bell tower was secluded enough you could get up and down easily. Even more so, once the place closed up at night.

"In that case, it looks like we need to visit the old train station," I decided.

"I haven't visited there since my school days," Velvet checked her camera bag for film. "Where else are we planning on visiting?"

"Given how much Yang talked about Cardin's yacht, I figured the marina would be a worthy search of our time. And if that doesn't turn anything up, maybe we need to stop by Yang's penthouse or Winchester Manor, see what we can find there. So don't burn through all of your film at once trying out Hazel's tips."

We fell silent after that, but since the old train station was only three blocks from the Orchid, the silence was short lived. Back when our fair city was just a port town trying to grow up, the railway system was vital for taking supplies from the boats on the harbor and moving them inland. As the years went on, demand changed, the rail barons decided to build a bigger station, and the old bell tower went silent, only to be changed into a small museum chronicling the history of the kingdom. A bit of a tourist trap, but at least it's a classy tourist trap. Though the police tape over the door ruined the effect.

"What do you mean, 'closed pending further investigation'?" Velvet read the notice on the door. My memory of the last time I visited the Belltower Museum was pretty sketchy, but I couldn't think of anything on display that would be worth the robbing.

"Obviously, they're not letting anyone in until the police finish investigating," the paperboy called from across the street.

"You know something about this, kid?" I called him over. The kid was dressed like he'd just escaped from a Charles Dickens novel. Olive slacks and a white shirt, dirty enough that it looked like he slept in a coalbox. He had a splash of color in his pocket in the form of a multicolored bandana, and some beaten up orange gloves, which matched his orange suspenders. His face held a pair of pale green eyes under a shock of pitch black hair, and he looked young enough to be late for school.

"Yeah, maybe I knows something about it. I'm always selling on this corner, so I sees all kinds of stuff," he crossed the street and handed one of his papers to a passing gentleman, who paid quickly before leaving. "Can I interest you two in the morning paper? We've gots the scoop on the Winchester murder! It's all here in the _Valerian Double Standard_."

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. The _Double Standard_ , aside from being the most fitting name for a newspaper in modern history, was the leading purveyor of what passed as journalism in the kingdom of Vale. The current editor-in-chief, one Cyril Ian, started out as a washed-out novelist before turning to journalism, and his prose still held the proud embellishments of a man who would rather be making up his own stories instead of telling those of other people. And like every other influential post in this town, the _Double Standard_ was on the take. Junior, Torchwick, even Vale PD and the mayor's office had been known to lean on old Cyril to emphasize certain details and leave others out of the latest story, especially if the subject was friendly with one or more of them.

"Tempting, kid, but one of my buddies is on the force, so I know plenty about Winchester. But what can you tell me about what happened here, you…"

"Oscar. My name's Oscar. And I'm a newsie, not a librarian," he shook his bag of papers to drive home the point.

"All right, kid, so I'll buy your paper with a generous tip, and you'll tell me what you know about why the museum is closed. Deal?"

"Only if you quits callin' me kid. I gots a nice job, a good place to live, all I need is a girlfriend and I'll be a full, productive member a' society," he winked at Velvet as he said the word _girlfriend_ , and she took a step backwards on reflex.

"Oscar, I've drank bottles of whiskey older than you," I explained once I paid him double what I usually tip newsies. "And a man who doesn't keep his word is just a boy with hair on his chest. You have my attention, so tell me what you know."

"Deal," Oscar grinned as he counted my money and handed me the _Double Standard_. "Some guy gots murdered in the museum a week and a half ago. His license said his name was Henry Marigold, if that name means anything to ya."

"It does, actually," I replied. Marigold was a minor celebrity in Vale's criminal underworld, and one of the best fences in the city. If you had some stolen merchandise you wanted moved, or you were looking for the kind of goods no law-abiding seller would stock, Henry could make things happen—for a reasonable fee, of course. He rubbed shoulders with most of the crème de la crime in the city, and he managed to stay out of petty criminal politics by taking business from any and all comers. Until today, I would have told you his position in town was pretty safe. After all, who would be stupid enough to harass a man on first name basis with Torchwick, Junior, and all their best fighters? "What happened? How did he die?"

"The caretaker of the museum founds him as she was openin' up for the day, so musta been nighttime. Cops outside was complainin' about all the blood, so that's never a good sign. I think I even heard one of 'em say it looked like he'd been sliced up with a samurai sword. 'Course, he didn't exactly strikes me as a sword expert, so grain-of-salt that one."

"Did they find anything important in the bell tower? What about on his person?"

"Do I look like a copper, sir?" Oscar rolled his eyes. "I've told you everything I know from standing around and peeking inside. You said you had a buddy on the force, try asking him to get you some dirt. He'd know better than me anyways."

"I might just do that. Thanks for the help, Oscar. You're a good man," I tipped my hat as I kept walking towards the marina. Velvet followed suit once she had blown the newsie a kiss, making me truly wish she had her camera out to take a picture of his reaction.

"What do you think, Jaune?" she asked once she had caught up to me.

"He was telling the truth," I lit a cigarette while I walked. "Or at least he thought he was telling the truth. And if he was, that puts a whole new wrinkle in this story."

"How so?"

"According to Nadir, Cardin saw whatever scared him about a week and a half ago. About the same time that Henry Marigold the fence gets bumped off, in a building that has a perfect line of sight to Winchester's window at the Orchid. That's a few coincidences too many for me."

"But how would Cardin have seen what was going on in the bell tower that late at night?"

"That, I don't know. I might have to call in one of my favors with Ren and get a look at Marigold's case file. Or maybe if we're lucky, his yacht will have the answer for us, save me the legwork."

"Do things ever work out that smoothly during your cases?" Velvet gave me a sidelong glance.

"There's always a first time."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Excellent news! "The Clean Sweep" has finally crossed the threshold of 25,000 words! 27,157 words, if you want the exact number. I find it rather hard to believe I made it this far, and I'm still nowhere near finished. But since I'm making this up as I go, I can't really say when the end is either.

Casting. I need to talk more about casting for a second. Since I somewhat-unwisely dropped so many names in that scene at the police station, I'm running low on people to bring in. So I'm working on tastefully blending in background characters from different crowd scenes in the show. For example, the phone girl at the beginning of Chapter 8 is the AI girl from Vale's CCT we saw in Volume 2. No prizes or anything for guessing who comes from what, but you can take pride in your obsession with detail

Also, my contest about Jaune and his gin is now closed. For those who didn't figure it out, the reason is this: According to Wikipedia, gin refers to a type of alcoholic spirit most commonly flavored with juniper berries. JNPR berries, if you will.

Now for the slightly more difficult piece of news. I _barely_ got this chapter finished on time. So in light of taking the time to properly write things, as well as maybe put up a buffer again, I will _not_ be adding another chapter next Friday. I will post something, but it will be far lighter than a regular chapter. Maybe you'll like it, maybe not, we shall see.

Bye for now, though! Make sure to follow and favorite (if you haven't done so already), leave a review, and tell everyone about this! Noir, much like polka, will never die! (An imaginary cookie for whoever gets that reference.)


	10. Chapter 10: My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean

Chapter 10: My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean

The city of Vale grew up on the seashore, so logic only followed that places to dock your watercraft were plentiful. But whenever any local talked about "The Harbor", you knew they were referring to the Vale Municipal Harbor. This was where all the giant cargo vessels from around the world parked to offload their goods, and carry Valerian goods back home with them. As you would expect from the size of ship involved, the Harbor's size was on the fine line between massive and vast. Each of the cargo ships was the size of a decent building, and smaller fishing vessels and tugboats flitted among them like giant, soggy pigeons.

Just to the north of The Harbor was The Marina, more formally known as the Shawcross Marina. Since civilian boats weren't allowed in The Harbor without at least two trees worth of forms and licenses, it made a great barrier to keep the common folk out, meaning that the area around the Shawcross was nice and open for the use of anybody who could afford to keep a dock there. If you have to ask about the price, you can't afford it, but neither can ninety-five percent of the population in Vale.

Naturally, the place kept some decent security to protect all the nice boats. Also naturally, the one nice boat I wanted access to was somewhere in there.

"So just how do you plan on getting to Cardin's yacht?" Velvet snapped a picture of the marina. "We have no idea where it is, and I can't imagine the security guards will take lightly to us looking around for it."

"It's way too light out for us to sneak in, even with all the boats to use as cover. So we need something that will let us in the front door without asking too many questions," I turned and looked at the stores on the street outside the marina, their different colors and sizes like books crammed on a shelf. My plan finally came together, but I was going to need a few different stores together to pull it off. Specifically, Butch's Flowers, The Drunk Duck Wine Cellar, and a general store whose sign was too corroded with sea salt to be read.

I walked up to the gate of the Shawcross like a man on a mission, a bottle of expensive-looking wine in one hand and a clipboard full of gibberish in the other. Velvet was carrying what looked like an entire rosebush, with the plants thick enough to obscure her face without making her completely blind. Our first line of defense was the simple bravado of ignoring their signs and gates and regulations. I didn't have much faith in that first line, and my lack of faith was justified as the worker at the gate began following us and ordering us to stop.

"Excuse me, what are you doing?" a feminine voice called after us. "This is a private marina. Only members and people with prior appointments are allowed in here." I turned to look. She was five feet and not much, with skin the color of slightly raw caramel and hair and eyes the color of really dark chocolate. She had a face that was decidedly boyish, and some hips that were decidedly _not_. She wore a white and navy striped shirt that managed to completely cover her chest, while still being tight enough to show off her curves, plus an equally well-fitting pair of navy jeans with shiny gold buttons. A red bandana around her neck and some plain gloves completed the classic dockworker look.

"What?" I said in my best accent. "They didn't call ahead for this? After all this work we put in, the boss forgot to call in that we were coming?"

"Nobody said anything today about—"

"You are freaking kidding me!" I shouted to nobody in particular. "What was your name again?"

"I'm Matte," the sailor bowed her head a little as she spoke. "Matte Skye."

"Look here, Matte," I explained, waving my hands as I did so. "I've only had this job at the flower shop two months. Not what I dreamed about, but it keeps the lights on. So today, the boss sends the new girl," I gestured to Velvet, who wisely stayed hidden behind her bouquet, "and me to deliver this big job. Mr. and Mrs. Tuggey-Jones are celebrating their tenth anniversary tonight, and they hired us to get their boat set up for a nice romantic cruise."

"I can see that, sir, but—" Matte tried to interrupt me, but I cut her off again by leaning into her face. Before we got in, I had splashed just enough of my flask onto my face to smell a little buzzed, hoping she would notice.

"And you would not _believe_ the details Mr. Jones keeps harping on about," I held up the wine bottle as emphasis. "See this? Bottle of 1909 Chateau Sorola, the same vintage they had on their wedding night. And you saw these flowers?" I pointed at Velvet again. "I counted the petals on those roses. 3,653 petals, one for every day they've been married. And that's including the leap years!"

"That's impressive, but I still can't—"

"And now, after all that work, I can't finish the job because _somebody else_ didn't do their job and let the Shawcross people know we were coming! How do you think my boss is going to react when she finds out we flubbed such a big job? I'll tell ya how she reacts. It's gonna be _my_ ass in a sling, _her_ ass in a sling," I nodded to Velvet, who shuddered in fear behind her roses, "And I'm sure when your boss gets the heat, it's gonna be _your_ ass in a sling, too. And with an ass like yours, you're probably gonna need at least two slings, maybe more. And then—"

"Okay!" Matte finally worked up the energy to interrupt me. She was really kind of cute when she was flustered, and a part of me felt a pang of guilt at tricking her like this. The other parts of me broke out a balance and a chalkboard and tried to explain how catching a murderer was worth stepping on a few emotional toes, but I wasn't quite sure I believed it yet. "I'm sorry nobody told me anything. My boss is a prick too, I understand. Just… come with me to the gatehouse and let me find the boat you're looking for."

I followed her back to the gate, trying not to stare at her ample buttocks. Somewhere in the world was a sailor who got to come home from sea and fondle those things, and I hoped he or she realized just how lucky they were. Once we got to the gate, Skye rushed into her post and came out with a thin binder.

"Here's my file of every boat in the marina," she flipped through the pages. "What did you say the couple's names were?"

"Tuggey-Jones, but I may be mispronouncing it. They don't keep me around for my silver tongue, you can imagine. Probably better to start from the back and work our way up." I reached around her to flip to the end. I managed to see what I needed before she pushed my hand away. One of the first lines on the last page. _Winchester, Cardin, Dock 14C_. With my real prize found, all I needed to do was find something close by that convincingly sounded like 'Tuggey-Jones'. "There we go!" I stabbed my finger on the second-to-last page. "Turgeone! That was the name I need. Right there at dock 14A!"

"Okay, good," Matte looked me in the eyes like I was about to walk into the lion's den, while wearing a suit made entirely from raw steak. "I'm not supposed to do this, so just go straight to the Turgeone's boat, drop off the flowers and wine, and come straight back. You think your boss can put an ass in a sling, you haven't seen the Captain when he gets pissed."

"I'll do that," I sighed in relief. "You're a lifesaver, Matte. A real peach. I owe ya one after this." I gave her a light clap on the shoulder as I walked away and motioned for Velvet to follow me into the forest of masts and sails. We waited until we were out of sight for a minute before dropping our disguises. Flowers, clipboard, and the wine were all left on the dock in front of the Turgeone's boat, while Velvet and I walked two rows past that to find Cardin's yacht.

I can't say Winchester's boat was the greatest I've ever seen, but it was certainly one of the more impressive models I've laid eyes on. She had two masts tall enough to make your neck stretch looking at the tops, and each one had its enormous sails tightly furled. A smokestack thick as my waist sat between the masts, in case the sails weren't enough to do her job. Everything above her hull looked like solid teak, with enough varnish and polishing to make it look almost metallic. The lower half of her hull was a dark blue, almost the same shade as the water beneath it. The upper white half was separated from the blue by a thin accent line of gold. The bow was dominated by a massive golden eagle, whose swept-back wings gave the accent line its starting and stopping points. Above the wing of the eagle was the name of the enormous vessel: the _Beautiful Lie_. Wordlessly, Velvet and I shared a look before rolling our eyes at the name. If Winchester wasn't already dead, I would have seriously contemplated offing him just for that name.

"When Yang told us Cardin had a yacht," Velvet frowned as we climbed aboard. "I imagined something with a Bermuda rig. Those sails look more like a gaff rig."

"She probably didn't know the difference. I certainly don't," I explained as I knelt down to examine the wood grain of the deck. The lighter bands of the wood had worn much faster than the darker ones, and the resulting pattern gave the deck an impressive amount of grip, which I imagined came in real handy during rough seas.

"It's the shape of the sails, primarily," she explained as she took a few pictures of the boat. "Bermuda rigs have just triangular sails, but this thing has almost-rectangular sails. It's a better look, personally, just not what I expected."

"You never struck me as the nautical type, Velvet," I admitted while I searched for an entrance to the _Lie_.

"Didn't you say your father served in the war?"

"Dad was a ground pounder. The only times he saw a boat were getting deployed and returning home." There was only one door worthy of the name on deck, and as I came closer, I saw that the door, which was easily several hundred Lien worth of fine teak, was being secured by a padlock and chain that couldn't have cost more than thirty. If that wasn't symbolic of something in the world, I'd eat my trench coat. I gestured to Velvet to come closer.

"My father was a cook, though his ship never saw combat. And my grandfather before him was a merchant sailor, so I've heard plenty of stories," she explained as she snapped another picture of the lock. "Can you get through that? All I have is a bobby pin." With the slightest hint of smugness, I pulled my lockpicks from a pocket on my vest and set to work. The bolt surrendered in less than two minutes, and we scurried inside like rodents hiding from a hawk.

Looking at the outside of the _Beautiful Lie_ , the message I got was of extravagance that just barely toed the line with gaudy. Inside the main room, that line was just barely visible in the distance. Nice, open interior, with more fancy dark wood from the doors to the baseboards. Marble floor around the kitchen and wet bar, and all-leather furniture. And as icing on the cake, a few nice maritime-themed art pieces and enough gold leaf to move one up an entire tax bracket, at least a third of it going into various CW logos on the walls.

"What are we looking for again?" she asked while she wrinkled her nose at the décor. "Besides crimes against fashion, I mean."

"Anything illegal," I put on a pair of leather gloves and began opening kitchen cupboards. Some of the bottles in the wet bar were worth a week of my rent, but nothing outright illegal in that. "Specifically, anything illegal that you'd need a professional fence to sell. Especially if it's valuable enough to be worth _killing_ said fence over."

We kept searching the main deck, but all we could find were a dozen or so small crates hidden in various places. They were usually a foot and a half square, and short enough to fit under beds or chairs. Once I found the ladder down to the engine room and hold, there were easily twice that many boxes hidden in every possible nook and cranny.

"These are certainly out of the ordinary," Velvet took another picture of the boxes in the engine room. "Who goes sailing with this cargo scattered around like this?"

"Probably somebody who doesn't plan on getting stopped and searched by the port authority," I offered as I searched for something to get the crate open. Finding a crowbar on the wall, I knelt down and used as much force as I dared to pry the wooden lid away from its box. Inside were a pair of old bronze masks, cushioned in hay. Time and weather had stained them both a pale green, except on a few spots on the back where somebody had scratched them until the original metal shone through. One mask was that of a cat's face, complete with a mischievous smile, while the other was more lizardlike than anything else. Both of them were crafted to a superb degree, and I could almost see the cat's fur and lizard's scales, even through the patina. Picking one up with my gloves took enough effort to convince me they were solid metal, and whoever originally wore them must have had a neck like a bridge cable.

"So, we know what's in the box," I concluded once Velvet had finished taking pictures of the masks, "But we don't know _what's_ in the box. You got pictures of the outsides of the crate, too?"

"I did," Velvet confirmed, "But I don't recognize some of these markings. The crest in the corner looks like the symbol on the flag of Menagerie, but it's not the same."

"We may have to do some digging at the library before any of this makes sense," I admitted with a hint of a bitterness. "Between these masks and that Marigold case, there's plenty to—" I didn't get the chance to finish before Velvet threw her hand over my mouth.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Excellent news, since I've been unable to post a new chapter the last two weeks. Due to the length of my latest crime against writing, my usual sources ( **The Dark Deciever** and **BecauseWhyNot57** ) advised me to split this latest chapter in two pieces. Meaning that Chapter 11 of "The Clean Sweep" is already finished and ready to be posted next week. Hopefully, this will either earn your forgiveness or at least buy me some time.

And yes, I did name the marina after Kerry, and I feel no shame about it. The same way I feel no shame about how I portrayed Matte (though if by some miracle, Kendra happens to read this story, know that I meant no offense in my actions here, but "Matte Skye" is just too cool of a name to pass up). Though if the worst complaint people have about my story is concerning the first mate, as opposed to the awkward sentences and weird imagery, then I will still feel pretty good.

Talking again about my sources, BecauseWhyNot57 has just released the first chapter of his own story, "Iron Knights". It's a historical AU where Jaune, Ren, Sun, Neptune, and Oscar are an American tank crew in World War II. His level of detail with the historical elements is incredible, and he manages to deliver all that detail without bogging down the narration. Frankly, I was impressed. If you like what I'm doing here, go give him a read.

Til next time, then! Don't forget to favorite/follow/review/tell everyone about this story. And tune in next week, where we find out what Velvet is doing (spoiler: It's not sex, happy though that would make me) and we get our first fight scene of the story!


	11. Chapter11: Of Books, Breasts, and Boxing

Chapter 11: Of Books, Breasts and Boxing

"You hear that?" she asked as her shoulders tensed and her head began to pivot. "Someone's coming! Old man, with a thick uniform, by the sound of it." I strained my ears, but all I could hear was the crashing of the waves and one very irritated seagull. Of course, Velvet's ears were about ten times the size of my own, so I felt deferring to her judgment on this one was a safe bet.

We hastily put the crates back where we found them and replaced the lock on the main door. By then, I could hear the old captain too, whistling "Atlas Maidens" in a key usually reserved for car horns and violated cats. The two of us breathed a sigh of relief when he walked past, only to turn around and walk towards the gangplank of the _Beautiful Lie_. We had just enough time to crawl on top of the building above the deck (the superstructure, Velvet called it) before he stepped aboard and began to casually walk the deck. After what felt like three weeks later, he finally moseyed back to the gangplank and left. Once my secretary agreed that he was out of earshot, we jumped to the deck and made ourselves scarce.

"I think we can safely say that was too close for comfort," I broke the silence once we were a few blocks away. "Breaking into a place has all kinds of risks to it, and doing it during the day is even worse. But our next step ought to be—" Sometime around then, I finally noticed Velvet was falling behind me, and I turned to see what was going on. What I saw nearly floored me.

I've always tried to keep my professional relationships and my personal ones separate, so my assessments of Velvet's beauty had always been limited to the academic. She had far too many curves to be a flapper, but she didn't quite have what it took to be called a bombshell. In my unprofessional opinion, her greatest physical allure was that she had neither any great deficiencies to cover nor strengths to accentuate. Her face wasn't the sort destined for immortalizing in paint, but it would be impossible to point to any one feature that needed help. Her posterior was shapely enough to catch one's attention, but not round enough to keep it there, and while her breasts would never be compared to mosquito bites, they wouldn't be called melons either. My secretary was the living embodiment of the phrase, "Jill of all trades, master of none".

At least, that's how she normally looked. The Velvet Scarlatina standing before me now had wrapped her arms around her chest, trying to suppress a much larger figure than I had previously imagined her to have. Her blouse, once comfortably loose, strained against the load like a galleon's sail before a hurricane, and its contents jiggled with the hypnotic consistency of a gelatin dessert. Her face, too, was red enough to be the cherries or strawberries on top of the gelatin. I hadn't ogled Xiao Long enough to make a good comparison, but I had no trouble imagining the two of them borrowing each other's clothes, should the occasion arise.

"A-Are you alright, Velvet?" I turned away before my face turned too red. I had imagined several reasons why she had fallen behind, but her bust spontaneously doubling in size wasn't one of them. "Where did those come from?"

"Since I was fourteen," she admitted as she tried to shrink behind me. By some lesser miracle, she stayed close enough I could smell her perfume, but not close enough to actually touch her front to my back. "Puberty hit me early, and all the others at school liked to tease me about them, so I looked up how to bind them down so nobody would notice. My binder must have broken when we jumped off the ship." I nodded in agreement. Velvet never struck me as somebody who chased the spotlight, and the cruelty of schoolchildren was one of the few things in life you could count on besides death and taxes.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said as we continued walking. "We all have some memories of school we'd rather forget, I think. Was college any better?"

"Yes and no," she sighed. "I wasn't the only one with an adult body by then, but I still had the old stereotypes of being a rabbit Faunus to deal with. I was better off using the binder and avoiding attention." As part of the treaties surrounding the end of the war, the Faunus Civil Rights Act made it so discrimination against anybody on account of their Faunus trait or their humanity was illegal. Of course, murder is illegal, too, for all the good that did Cardin Winchester.

"Wow," I changed the subject before things got too distracting or depressing. "What are we going to do about those photographs? I think most developers I know might give us trouble if we admit we took those pictures inside a murder victim's ship."

"I have my own darkroom back home. I'm still learning the finer points, but I can take care of all the film myself in a few hours."

"Well, that makes things substantially easier. The only other things we need are those police reports and some research on those masks," No sooner had I voiced my need than I saw the bookstore across the street from us, Tukson's Book Trade. According to their sign, this guy had every book under the sun, but that sounded suspiciously like false advertising. But so long as he could find me a book about those masks, I'd graciously let it slide.

My danger sense started going off the moment I crossed the street. It's not something I've ever been able to explain, but every old soldier or cop I know has some kind of radar in their head that starts beeping whenever things ain't right. And looking at the closed shutters at Tukson's, plus the fact that a downtown street was completely empty of people, my radar was howling like an air raid siren. I motioned to Velvet to stand a few yards off to one side, just in case something unpleasant was waiting for whichever poor sap opened the door first. I tried opening the door a crack at first, but as the bell cheerfully rang my presence, I dispensed with stealth and threw the thing open.

Tukson's Book Trade looked like far too many bookstores I had frequented in the past. Lots of shelves full of books, enough to require a second story of the building, with barely enough space for two people to walk side by side. The sales counter was a lesser wood than all the teak on the _Beautiful Lie_ , but it had been polished with care until it gleamed like a mirror. The space between the façade and the first of the shelves was spacious enough for a coffee table and three chairs, but that wasn't what drew my attention as I walked inside. That honor belonged to the enormous bloodstain covering the world map behind the register. Human nature makes us exaggerate whenever blood is involved. The average person only has about ten pints in them, but even one pint sprayed on a wall makes a room look like an abbatoir. Taking care not to touch anything close to the crime scene, I peered over the counter.

Mr. Tukson (or so his nametag identified him) was only of average height, but he had broad shoulders and enough muscle for a man two feet taller than him. His hands ended in a set of sharp claws, proving him to be a Faunus, and his arms were covered in self-defense wounds. Perhaps as the conclusion of his self-defense, the entirety of his head from his ears on back was missing, a trick that usually requires a very large bullet. As I tried to piece together what exactly had happened to the poor bookseller, two people walked out of the back room together, arguing as they went.

"So it's in a safe, big deal!" the man explained. He was young and lithe, with silver hair and the cocky demeanor of someone who had the entire situation under control, or at least thought he did. He was wearing blue jeans and a grey shirt with short sleeves, and a handgun big enough to make Freud roll over in his grave sticking out of a shoulder holster. "We lock the place down, call for some assistance, and come back tomorrow. It's not like the boss doesn't keep any safecrackers on the payroll."

"You know how Don Roman is a stickler for the details," the woman countered. She was shorter than him, with long green hair and dark skin. She was wearing a white pair of capris and a green shirt that she had rolled up to show off her perfectly flat midriff. "He said he wanted the money and the logbook from Tukson, that means we need the money and logbook. We show up at Villa Torchwick without them, we're in trouble. And that's without mentioning the trouble from killing Tukson!"

"He swung at me first, and I defended myself. You can certainly vouch for that."

"He swung at you in his office, but you splattered his brain all over the front of the store! Anybody who walks by runs the risk of seeing it!"

"Then we pull the usual strings," Gray-hair mimed playing with a puppet using his fingers. "This isn't the first dead body he's made vanish without an investigation, and it sure as hell won't be the last. And neither will that bum next to the counter." I looked around the store, just in case he was talking to somebody else, before pointing at myself in confusion. "Yes, you. The store's closed, in case you didn't figure it out already."

"I was looking for some history books, and believe it or not, the door was still open. I just hope one of those strings you pull includes a good maid; because this place is gonna stink to high heaven in a few hours. Shredded brains is one of those smells that just lingers in a place, believe me."

"I wouldn't know, personally," he shrugged his shoulders, a gesture that seemed extremely common to his body language. "I avoid sticking around places like that any longer than strictly necessary. But speaking of sticking around, I'll bet you've already heard way too much for us to let you live." He reached for his hand cannon and leveled it at my chest with both hands. "I'm sure you've realized who you're dealing with by now?"

"If I had to wager any guesses," I kept my hands away from my sides as I inched back in front of the door, "You're Mercury Black and Emerald Sustrai, known on the street as 'The Thief' and 'The Butcher', two of Torchwick's best hitters. And poor Tukson back there was either late on his payments or got caught with his hand in the cookie jar."

"That's exactly what happened," Mercury gave me a nod of respect. "Like I said, you know too much to get out alive. Just business, I'm sure you understand." I gave the hitman my best "death seeker's" grin.

"And I'm sure _you_ understand that I'm in front of a plate glass door," I gestured behind me. "Even if you hit me with that heater, bullets that big will go clean through me and break the window. You probably got lucky that nobody noticed the first shot, but that much glass will get _somebody's_ attention."

"He's right, Merc," Emerald put her hand over his, slowly lowering his gun. "Besides, you can take a guy like him with your bare hands, no problem."

"Easily," the Butcher smiled and handed his gun to the Thief. "You scout around the building, make sure nobody's around to hear. By the time I'm finished, we can figure out how to get rid of him silently." She nodded her agreement and disappeared through into the back office. Mercury made a nice big show of stretching his arms and putting on a pair of brass knuckles, but I could see enough of his movements to tell he had some actual skill to back up his ego. As he finally closed the distance, he spun in place before throwing a blinding fast roundhouse kick at my head. His legs had enough reach to hit me squarely in the temples, and enough force to drop most men to the pavement immediately.

Good thing I'm not most men.

As he threw his kick, I threw something of my own—a pocket almanac I had filched from next to the register. It didn't have enough speed or mass to cause any damage, but it was fast and brightly colored to distract Mercury and make him drop his leg enough for me to take the blow on my shoulder. The impact still felt like a size 10 sledgehammer, but I had taken far worse hits in my career. The hitman blinked, once, before switching legs and sending another roundhouse at shoulder height. Remembering an old trick a friend of my father taught me, I took the blow on the upper arm and used the momentum to pivot on my front foot and send a punishing hook towards Mercury. He blocked my fist before it was too late, but the force of my swing plus the momentum I stole from his kick was enough to disrupt his balance and force him a few steps away. He looked at me with something between shock and respect in his eyes. "Just who the hell are you?"

"I'm a hopeless drunk with nothing to lose," I said as I took my proper boxing stance. We circled for a few moments. I had surprised Mercury once already, and he was not planning on making that same mistake twice. Eventually, though, he saw his opening and charged in. I blocked as if he was launching another giant kick, but he faked me out by grabbing my shoulders and gave his best goring bull impression using his knee and my abdomen. I grit my teeth through the worst of it, but I've had baseball bats swung at me that hurt less than that knee. The blows wouldn't kill me, but he could possibly knock me out if we kept this up for too much longer. And then all he would have to do is wait for his partner to come back with his gun and give me the Tukson treatment. I needed a plan, and quickly.

"Well, I'm impressed you're still standing and all," he smirked as he pulled his leg back for one last blow, "But I've got places to be today, so this will have to be good-bye." I waited for the moment between Mercury swinging his leg back and thrusting it forward, and I threw a right uppercut clean into his chin. It wasn't my best hit, but it was good enough to make him let go of my shoulders, while I followed it up with a left hook to his throat. _That_ one got his attention, and he needed three or four steps worth of backpedaling to start breathing again. I closed the distance like a foxhound tasting blood, and soon I was forcing him back into one of the aisles of books.

Deep down, fighting is about two major goals: Playing to your own strengths, and denying the other guy his whenever possible. Most of Mercury's best moves had been his giant sweeping kicks, and he could use them to terrifying effect in the open area of the bookstore. Here in the stacks, though, there was hardly enough space to walk, much less fight, and the hitman was limited to his fists and the occasional front kick. We traded plenty of blows as I pushed him back, but I seemed to be winning the exchange, a little at a time. Once the aisle opened up at an intersection, he feinted twice, then snuck a jumping axe kick past my guard and into the side of my head. My bell was ringing like a wedding, but adrenaline managed to take all of my body's complaints and shove them into a file cabinet labeled "Things to Worry About Later." Free to ignore all the various cries of pain coming in, the rest of my brain had the space it needed to let me catch my enemy's leg before he brought it down and shove him into the wall.

He hit head first, then his shoulders, and by the time his legs pushed against the wall, he was already leaning almost parallel to tackle me into the ground. I had to give him points for improvisation, but his need for speed came at the cost of subtlety. I've had more trouble reading neon signs than I did guessing his intentions, and I let him know it in the form of a knee to the face to get him upright, followed by a right hook that sent him sprawling down the next aisle. By the time he had gotten up, I had drawn my Model 10, cocked the hammer, and aimed squarely at his chest. Merc's eyes widened, but he kept silent as he placed his hands on his head.

"I'd be real careful about moving, slick," I said to him. "You're pretty fast on your feet, but I think I'm a little bit faster with my iron. It's over." I've always told people that I'm not a hero, and this was a prime example of why: Heroes aren't stupid enough to say things like that to a universe with a sick sense of humor. In this case, the punch line was somebody silently walking behind me and placing a long green dagger to my throat.

"You're right," Emerald agreed, her voice dripping with fake enthusiasm. "It _is_ over. So drop the piece." I complied, and the noise of my revolver falling was as loud as any bullet I've fired from it. I was now outnumbered, outgunned, and there was still a knife at my throat. Not the best situation, tactically speaking.

"What did you find, while I was busy fighting for my life?" Mercury asked as he got to his feet. It gave me more than a hint of pleasure to see how long it took the hitman to get up, with plenty of shaking as he did so.

"I checked the entire surrounding block," she said as she threw her partner's giant gun back to its rightful owner. "Nobody was close enough to hear anything." Which meant that Velvet had either hidden from the thief or escaped the area in time, which meant neither she nor her photos would fall into the wrong hands.

"Good. So we can dispose of this jackass like we should have done when he first stepped in here," Mercury confirmed as he pointed his gun at my face. "How did you say it, again? _Be real careful about moving, slick_." I don't know how big the barrel of my gun looked in his eyes, but his looked wide as a city street as I stared it down. I wasn't fighting my way out of this one, so I was going to have to use my brain while it was still in my skull.

"I don't see any way out of this one," I sighed in the manliest way I could. "Next time you see Don Roman, give him my apologies for all the trouble I've caused. I'm sure between Winchester's murder and what happened to Henry Marigold, he's already got a full dance card. And that's not even counting the peace talks with Junior Xiong on the verge of collapse."

"How do you know anything about that?" Emerald flinched, but she managed to hold the knife steady, for which I became very grateful.

"He doesn't know anything about Winchester," Mercury made a big show out of spinning the cylinder of the revolver at me. "He's stalling us, because he still thinks he can escape somehow."

"The same way I don't know anything about the axe marks in his ribs, or one of Junior's knives in his suit?" That got his attention, if the paleness in his face was anything to go by.

"We need to bring him to Roman," Emerald said, with a hint of pleading in her voice. "See what he knows. Worst case, we kill him later."

"She's got a point, Merc," I nodded as much as I dared with the knife in the way. "And picking my brain is gonna be much harder after you smear it on the wall." If looks could kill, Mercury's glare would have saved him the bullet. He looked down at his gun, back at me, and back at his gun again. Finally, he smirked again, twirled the gun so he was holding it by the barrel, then swung the grip into the side of my head.

I don't actually remember feeling pain on the moment of impact, but with how quickly the lights went out, I'm a little glad for that.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** How about that, Tukson is dead in this story too! Some poor saps in this world just can't catch a break. Of course, the dead don't have to put up with the shenanigans of the living, so maybe he's better off, because he's safe from my linguistic butchering. But you can see why I had to split up that last chapter; the fight scene just took too long to explain adequately.

Even though I'm up past the 34k mark of words, I still took a few liberties on this chapter, based in part on what we already know from the canon RWBY. Tukson still runs a book store and dies in his first scene. Emerald and Mercury still work for Roman, and I made the call that "The Thief" and "The Butcher" made too much sense as their nicknames. Emerald was always the sneaky one who didn't care as much about violence, while Mercury just loves hurting people and smirking while he does so (think of their reactions during the fall of Beacon). And I gave Velvet a fan-service upgrade, because she is the most attractive female in all of Remnant, and it's high freaking time people start appreciating her as such! In a similar way, I have been hinting at Jaune's fighting skills for a while now, just so when he opened that can of whoop-ass on Mercury, it wouldn't seem _quite_ so absurd. To give a brief explanation of Jaune's fighting, he's probably got a lot in common with Rocky Balboa. He can take an unholy beating while he gauges your weaknesses and stay on his feet long enough to make a comeback. As you will see during this story, they don't call him "Armored Arc" for nothing.

"Maybe or maybe not" is the status for next week, however. Personal life must sadly take precedent over my mere hobby here, and I want to make sure Chapter 12 is decent. Thankfully, I still have my sea shanties to post. Until then, however, remember to favorite/follow, leave a review, and tell anyone you know who likes RWBY, film noir, or trainwrecks. Because everybody loves a trainwreck…


	12. Chapter 12: When at Roman's

Chapter 12: When at Roman's…

A word of advice about being pistol whipped: Avoid it if you can, because it _hurts_. Despite what my nickname of "Armored Arc" might lead you to believe, I can feel just as much pain as the next guy. As I finally came around, all of those pains I had been ignoring all came around at once like ten years of back taxes. My head was still spinning, no idea where I was or why, my arms and legs wouldn't respond (and I seriously hoped that was from some kind of restraint instead of being paralyzed), and my stomach felt like somebody was poking me repeatedly with a stick.

Once I finally got my eyes open, I discovered that somebody was, in fact, poking me repeatedly with a stick. The poker in question didn't even reach five feet tall, and only the very well-placed curves of her torso kept me from assuming she was a child. One eye was a bright, cheery pink in color, while the other was a coffee brown, and her hair was split between the two colors. She appeared to be wearing a tailored suit, built on the colors of her hair and eyes, plus an off-white that reminded me of fresh cream. The stick the midget had been poking me with was actually a lace parasol, though I could feel it was a touch heavier than it should have been.

I was hallucinating. Just what I freaking needed that day.

"If you're with my subconscious, then I demand to speak with your manager," I slurred at her. "The service here stinks, and I don't even know what I did to hallucinate this. I tried hashish that one time in high school, but that's it. There is zero reason for me to be seeing things." The woman gave me a funny look and tilted her head to the side, like a puppy that saw something confusing. After snapping her fingers, she walked over to me and gave me a nice big pinch on the shoulder, which told me two things.

First, pinching people was the universally accepted manner to show someone they were or were not dreaming, which meant I was awake, and my tricolored captor was real. The second thing it taught me was that she had grip strength like a crab that got a summer job as a blacksmith. I still didn't know who I was dealing with, but tied up the way I was, my life was in her hands. The woman then surprised me again by rummaging around behind me and offering me a flask of something that smelled like stale bread soaked in kerosene.

"Not that I don't appreciate the offer, miss," I explained, trying to sound apologetic, "but the last thing I remember was somebody trying to kill me. How do I know this isn't poisoned?" She responded by taking a long swig of the flask herself, then offering it to me again. While there are several ways to beat the "you drink some first" test for poisons, I didn't see any of the usual tricks, and besides, if that dame really wanted to kill me, there were easier ways to do it, so I cautiously took a swig as she tilted the flask into my mouth.

Stale bread and kerosene was a good explanation for the taste, too. I coughed and hacked for a minute before my various aches and pains started to muffle, like there was a thick blanket between them and me. My first fear was that she'd drugged me to keep me from escaping or calling out for help, but I could still feel my tongue and fingers wiggle, so maybe that flask really was for the pain. Which seemed like a strangely generous move for a dead man walking. Maybe whoever left me in this broom closet actually meant to let me—

Son of a _bitch_. I finally remembered what happened to me. Emerald and Mercury must have brought me here after coldclocking me. Meaning this closet was in one of Roman Torchwick's properties. Which further meant that there were anywhere between one and "too many" armed guards between me and my freedom. And since I couldn't feel the weight of my Model 10 anywhere, "too many" could have been as low as half a dozen, not counting the dwarf with the umbrella, who had stepped out of the room shortly after I drank from her flask.

No sooner had I realized she had vanished than she reappeared, smiling. It was not a pleasant smile, by any stretch of the imagination. It was a smile that you often see in schoolrooms, when that kid you hate is about to get punished; or sometimes on the face of a housewife when something bad happens to the woman she's jealous of. I didn't know _why_ she flashed me that smile as she began to drag my chair out of the closet, but it did not bode well for any hardboiled detectives in the crowd.

The legs of the chair made a muffled squeak as they dragged across the marble floor. Due to the angle I was being dragged at, I could only really get a good view of the ceiling of the place, but what a ceiling it was. Held up with marble columns, with lines of gold trim thin as a pencil. In between the columns were a series of painted scenes, mostly either landscapes from around Vale or scenes of the kingdom's founding. The contrast between that ceiling and the rooms on the _Beautiful Lie_ was plain to see. Cardin's sense of style seemed entirely based around a desperation that everybody realize how rich he was, and making that point as obvious as possible to the layman. Whoever decorated this place understood how to be understated while still using the best materials out there; if you couldn't feel the money in this place, that was your fault, and not his.

While I admired the architecture, my new best friend had dragged me up a flight of stairs to the ground floor (meaning I woke up in the basement) and around two corners into a long hallway full of suits of armor. We passed a covered porch on an interior courtyard, like the old Roman villas, and up another flight of stairs until she spun me around in front of a pair of oak double doors, guarded by two men. They were dressed in white shirts and black trousers with matching vests, looking like any number of butlers or waiters in the kingdom. Unlike most butlers and waiters, they also wore white suit coats and gray bowler hats, and each carried a sawn-off shotgun in a shoulder holster and a stock-less Thompson at their waist. They glanced at me, at the girl, then at each other before opening the doors.

The office was big enough to play baseball in, but was otherwise not much different than the rest of the house. Lots of marble columns, a scattering of art, and an oak desk the size of a pool table. On the corners and sides of the room stood six men, dressed and armed exactly like the door guards. On a couch on one side sat Emerald and Mercury, wearing gray bowlers of their own. Leaning against the back wall behind the table was another mystery woman with long hair black as sin, and a body built to match. The red dress with yellow trim she wore did a fine job of emphasizing while covering, and her body language was one of bored arrogance, the look that said you had far more important things to be doing than this, and more interesting things too. Behind the desk itself sat Don Roman Torchwick.

Torchwick reminded me of a statue that had been left out in the elements for just a few years. In his prime, the man must have cut a pretty imposing figure. He was tall enough that most men looked up to him by default, and his bright orange hair further marked him out from the crowd like a painted sign. His clothes were as immaculate as the day they were made, and his confidence brooked no tolerance for pissing matches with his underlings. Much like his mansion, if you couldn't tell Roman was the boss in the room, that was a reflection of your own failings instead of his. It was only when you looked closer that you could see the passage of time on him. There were some crow's feet around his visible green eye, and his hair had a few streaks of grey fighting for prominence. His white jacket had some wrinkles from years of loyal service, and the black bowler hat on the desk had a pair of dents implying he had worn it into battle as well as into meetings. Finishing off the ensemble was an expensive-smelling cigar and a sturdy gray cane leaning against the desk, a grudging concession to Father Time.

"Good morning, sweetheart," Torchwick smiled, and the impression of a cat playing with its food sprang unbidden to my thoughts. "I hope you slept well?" I swallowed before answering. On the one hand, the Don had killed hundreds of people without batting an eye, and my death wouldn't even register on his radar. But on the other hand, I was still Jaune Arc, and if today was my last day, then I was going down with my rapier wit swinging.

"Certainly not the most comfortable sleep I've had," I admitted, "But compared to the beds out in the harbor, I'd say I got the better end of the deal."

"I don't know about that. I've never heard anyone in the harbor complain about it once they got settled in," he laughed, and the rest of the room laughed with him. I couldn't quite find it in me to laugh, but I at least got a convincing chuckle out of the deal. Once the room got quiet again, the Don turned his attention to a waiter's tray on his desk, which carried all of my personal effects I had on me when Mercury Black punched my ticket to Slumberland. He picked up my wallet and began leafing through it with a casual disinterest. I usually felt the same way when I looked through my wallet, and I'd bet the kingpin hadn't counted a stack of bills that small for a long time.

"I already checked his ID, Don Roman," Emerald bowed her head like she was speaking to royalty. "Jaune Arc, formerly VPD Homicide, now a private eye. He's got an office in the old Luna building, according to his business card."

"Jaune…Arc, you say?" he squinted, as if he had just heard an old piece of music he couldn't remember the title of. "Why do I remember that name?" Torchwick tapped the ashes off his cigar as he tried to remember. Personally, I had no idea why he would know who I was, so it wasn't like I could help him or anything. "Did you box during high school, by chance? Neo, bring me my ledgers from ten or eleven years ago." The midget who brought me to Roman saluted her boss, then walked towards another door in the office and disappeared.

"Yeah, I did," I replied, shrugging my shoulders as much as I could through the rope binding me. "I've been boxing since I was ten, but I really couldn't use it worth a damn until high school. Definitely came in handy on the force, I'll tell you that much."

"Is that so?" Mercury sneered. "I suppose that explains how I landed so many kicks on you back at Tukson's place."

"It also explains why _he_ was the one holding _you_ at gunpoint when Emerald showed up, and not the other way around," the lady in red cut him off.

"After all the work I've done for this organization, Cinder, you still honestly think I hadn't planned ahead?" Mercury's gray eyes shone like knife edges as he glared back. "I knew how long Emerald would take to check the perimeter, and I stalled in the fight long enough for her to return and finish things off."

"And you chose to wait things out staring down the barrel of his gun? You're fortunate he planned to turn you over to the police instead of killing you himself. Heaven knows Junior probably has a bounty on you and Emerald." Not only did Cinder have a body to kill for and eyes fiery enough to incinerate you where you stood, but that woman's voice was as husky and smoky as a grilled ear of corn. She could probably make reading a cookbook sound like an erotic invitation, and hearing her berate Merc set all kinds of strange emotions stirring inside me. "One of these days, I hope the Don finally takes my advice and forgets to keep bailing you out of prison." Before things got any more heated, Neo the lapdog came back with an old, cracked leather ledger as thick around as Cinder's hips.

"Finally. Now, let's see here…" he began leafing through one of the pile of ledgers, frowned, and then picked up another. Eventually, he stopped, looked closely at the page he was reading, then began to chuckle to himself. "Well, now! Truly, it is a small world we live in."

"What is it, Don Roman?" Cinder turned her shoulders so she could properly face her boss.

"Let me tell you a story to explain," his eyes turned a little dusty as he shook the cobwebs out of his memories. "It was around ten or eleven years ago, and I had just become a made man for the family. I was walking around Vale with some of my associates, and as we walked past where they were hosting the Golden Gloves, that young amateur boxing tournament. There was a bookie outside the place, letting people place bets on the kids' fighting. I asked a few questions, and he told me that the semifinals were starting. The favorite to win was some kind of trained gorilla named—"

"Haddock the Hammer," I whispered under my breath. As a rule, I avoid dwelling on the past, lest I slip into the dreaded realm of has-been-dom, but it had been over a decade since I had thought of that boxing tournament.

"—plus two other nobodies from Mountain Glenn and Vytal, and dear Mr. Arc. So I asked the bookie what kind of odds were out there, and he told me he was offering 3,000 to 1 odds that Arc would make it to the final round and beat Haddock by knockout in the sixth round. I was still in a good mood from my initiation, so I said what the hell and bet my entire wallet on him. Which was only $105 at the time, but I didn't feel like taking out a loan from my friends for a spur-of-the-moment bet."

I didn't say anything in response, but my memory was reeling as I remembered that old boxing tournament. I hadn't ever considered myself Golden Gloves material , but my coach quite disagreed with my assessment. He said I had talents like a block of marble; nice and heavy already, and just in need of some sculpting and polishing to be something really valuable. I didn't believe him at all during my freshman year, treated his words with skepticism as a sophomore, and finally realized what he meant as a junior. By the time I registered for the Golden Gloves in my senior year, I was a genuine threat in the ring, and the fact that nobody knew a thing about me made me twice as dangerous.

"And wouldn't you know it, with fifteen seconds left in the sixth round, Jauney boy caught Haddock on the chin with a right haymaker and knocked him unconscious. And my little bet turned into $315,000."

"If not killing me is your little way of paying me back," I proposed after a moment of silence, "then I'll gladly call us square once I'm back in my office with a drink in my hand."

"I haven't killed you _yet_ ," he clarified. "Whether or not that changes depends on what you can tell me about Winchester's death that I don't already know. And since I have numerous… friends in the police department, I already know quite a bit."

"I don't doubt that, but before I start talking, are you sure you want this whole room knowing about it? I mean, this is technically an ongoing murder investigation." Roman frowned, then nodded his agreement.

"Mercury, Emerald, take the boys and go patrol something. If I need you for anything, I'll give the usual signal. And Merc?" he called before the group had left the room. "I'll discuss this matter with you later." Once the door snapped shut, the only people left in the room were myself, Roman, and the two women called Neo and Cinder.

"These two are trustworthy, then? I don't think I recognize 'em, myself."

"You've already surprised me and mine once today, Mr. Arc, and I'd like to make that the limit. I can assure you my bodyguard is in absolutely no risk of divulging my secrets." Nodding to her boss, Neo opened her mouth, revealing a mass of scar tissue roughly the shape of a piece of cauliflower where her tongue should have been. My surprise must have been too obvious, because Roman continued. "One of my earlier competitors thought he could use Neapolitan here to send me a message about the territory on the western side of the city and to whom it rightfully belonged. As messages go, it was remarkably concise."

"Do I want to know what kind of message you sent him in response?"

"Not if you have any plans for dinner tonight." The kingpin gave Neo one last nod, and she turned to me with a wicked grin. In one fluid motion, she reached for her umbrella, drew a long, thin blade from its shaft, and slashed at me with it. The ropes that had been holding my arms down fell off cleanly, and not a thread of my clothes was snipped in the process. "I don't keep her around just for her good looks, as you can imagine."

"And Cinder? Obviously she ain't just your secretary, based on how she and Mercury talked to each other."

"I'm his _consigliere_ , if you must know," the dame made a big show of bending her leg and adjusting her black glass heels. "And Mercury is a bruiser with delusions of grandeur. His ego is like a topiary bush; if you don't cut it down every so often, it just spirals and grows unmanageable. I've got half a mind to send you a check for trimming him down to size." I smiled back, but my heart wasn't in it.

First thing you noticed about Cinder was her legs. Wars have been started over legs like those and the women attached to them. But if she really was Roman's _consigliere_ , then she had a brain just as dangerous as the rest of her. In the old crime families, the _consigliere_ was the title given to the don's most trusted adviser, their right-hand man or woman, and as such, one of the few people in the family who could outright argue with the boss without jeopardizing their health.

"Well, in that case I'll get to brass tacks," I cleared my throat, choosing my words like they were my last ones. "Since you've got friends in the department, I'll assume you already know the big details from Winchester's autopsy."

"I've never been a fan of assuming things. You tell me the high points, and I'll tell you if it's news to me or not."

"Okay then," I cleared my throat, glad that Neo had freed my arms with her umbrella-sword. "Two days ago, in the late morning, Cardin Winchester's body fell off the top of the Orchid onto a diner's Rolls Royce."

"That's what the news stations have said, yes."

"But the M.E. found out that it wasn't the fall that killed Winchester. He'd been dead for about 36 hours before getting dropped, and whoever did that must have kept him somewhere special where the bugs didn't get to him like they normally do."

"Dr. Polendina did mention that in her report, yes."

"She also found several dozen bullets, in a whole fruit salad of calibers, garnished with two rounds of buckshot. Plus a handful of axe wounds on the sides, in between the ribs."

"There's no kill like overkill, as the kids say these days," Roman shrugged as he tapped out his ashes.

"And the icing on the cake was that his suit coat was pinned in place by a giant knife with Hei Xiong's logo on the blade. According to my sources, it's the same style of knife he gives to his entire inner circle."

"Which probably helped sell the suicide angle, to the uninformed masses. But these are all things I know from the autopsy. If you're trying to convince me to let you live, you'll need better leverage than that."

"The autopsy, yes, but do you have the police report from the crime scene?"

"Sadly, not yet."

"Then you have no idea how Winchester got up there in the first place?"

"I would assume his murderers carried him up the stairs at the Orchid, gave him a shove, then fled while everyone was focused on the dead man."

"Great idea, except that there's only one door up to the roof, which was padlocked at the time, and had enough cobwebs in front of it to weave a set of curtains. They got to the roof from a neighboring building."

"With the rain pouring like it was? Must have been some jump to get across with the body."

"The building next door was having work done on their water tank, and we found some wood in the alley below. Would have been easy to steal some longer boards and make a gangplank out of them, knock them off when they escaped. Also, I found a _dry_ matchbook for Turney's on the rooftop. I've never been there myself, but I'm told it's—"

"A very expensive bar that doubles as a Triad front?" Cinder interjected before picking up a thin folder from her boss's desk. "Basically, yes. Their plum wine is to die for, if you ever visit."

"Anything else big you remember, sport?" Roman asked as he stubbed out the cigar.

"That's everything from the autopsy and crime scene that I saw, Don Roman," I scratched my head as I thought. It was rather nice having my arms free to gesture, but it had the added side effect of reminding me that my legs and back were still tied down. If I even thought too hard about escaping, Neo would stick me like a kebab.

"Which also happens to be everything in the police reports," Cinder turned her folder around to show me. Roman had lied; he did have the crime scene report already, and he was testing me to see if I would give him the same answers. "Either the reports are good, or Junior's bought Arc off as well."

"I did think it was kind of funny that nobody had bribed this mess into disappearing yet," I thought out loud, hoping to find some more information that would convince Roman to spare me. "Usually, both of you are pretty quick at that, but the investigation is still open."

"I'm puzzled as well," Roman agreed, sitting up in his chair. There was a sigh in his voice, like a gust of wind right before a tree falls, or a cowboy who had finally decided to shoot his wounded horse. "A pity you couldn't have been more help to me. You seem like a decent enough guy." The kingpin slowly shook his head before reaching for my beloved Model 10. I was running out of options, but as he examined the chamber, an idea sparked, like a piece of dry grass that finally caught a spark. It was risky, sure, but if it actually worked, I could not only save my life, but save myself hours of research, which can make a substantial difference in the private eye business.

"Of course, that's just what I saw at the crime scene and during the autopsy," I stroked my chin as I 'remembered'. I was never an amazing actor in life, but if there was ever a time to sell my bid, this was it. "I did some more digging today before I ran into Emerald and Mercury, but I hadn't had time to confirm any of the leads I picked up. If you could somehow fill in some blanks for me, I'd gladly share the info with you."

"And why should we trust your judgement?" Cinder sneered over her police report. "There's already plenty of evidence to say Junior's men killed Winchester. You could just be making things up to save your own skin."

"That is always a possibility," I admitted. I then made the mistake of reaching up to scratch my nose too quickly and nearly got my finger nail clipped back to the second knuckle by Neo's reflexes. "But the fact of the matter is you need to find the man who did this and make an example of him. Desperately need it, even."

"This ought to be good," Roman leaned in close to me, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth. "Why do you think I'm so desperate?"

"Because reputation is everything in your line of work," I met the Don's gaze as well as I could, but the intensity of his eyes combined with my nerves at being executed while tied to a chair left me shaking like a newborn deer, still figuring out how to walk. "You've got plenty of men and guns to make people do what you want, but it's your reputation that makes that threat stick in the first place. If one of your closest allies just got knocked off by an enemy, and you let it slide, who's gonna want to be your ally? What poor immigrant shopkeeper is going to want to send in protection money if it's not protecting them from anything? And how many small-time outfits will take this as a sign of weakness and start a feeding frenzy for your territory? If Xiong really is behind this, all he has to do is wait until you're too busy fending off the buzzards to stop him." I took a deep breath, then gave my closing statement with as much conviction as I could muster:

"For your own sake, you need to find Cardin's killer, make an example out of them, and remind the entire kingdom what happens to anybody stupid enough to screw with Roman Torchwick." Silence reigned in the room for several long minutes. Neapolitan, who obviously wasn't going to be the one breaking the silence, kept her sword between me and her boss, who was exchanging several meaningful looks with Cinder. What those looks meant was anyone's guess, but the feeling of grudging acceptance on the _consigliere's_ face was plain as a neon sign.

"How do you like your brandy, Mr. Arc?" Roman asked as he set down my pistol.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** By Oobleck's thermos, this chapter was an ordeal to write. Getting ready to go back to college, plus the work of having an actual summer job, really does eat away at your time. And that's not counting the time lost from writer's block and other intellectual pursuits. (I've also started playing Darkest Dungeon, and it's been a fascinating game, let me tell you. I almost want to write a story about it.)

Over the next few months, I think I will have to stick with my "every other week" schedule for posting new things. So in two weeks, I will either have another Sea Shanty ready, or perhaps another little gem I have been working on. The only hint I can give about that is this: Monty Python.

Today, though, please enjoy this next chapter of "The Clean Sweep", and don't forget to follow, favorite, review (constructive criticism is always welcomed), and tell your friends about my labor of love. I put a good amount of love into it, and I hope you can add a little of your own.


	13. Chapter 13: The Devil You Know

Chapter 13: The Devil You Know

"I'm sorry, Roman, I must have misheard you," I apologized. "It sounded like you were asking me about drinking brandy."

"You heard me just fine. If you have as much information as I hope you have, I'm going to want a drink. So again, how do you take your brandy?"

"I'm more of a gin man, myself, so your answer is 'However I can get it,' How do you take yours?"

"With champagne, actually," Roman pressed a button on his desk, and a maid walked in pushing a drink cart. "A third of a glass of brandy around room temperature, and chill the champagne cold as a Schnee's heart. On a hot day, and with the right vintage, it's a borderline religious experience." He nodded to the help, who quickly made two drinks and placed one of them in front of each of us. Another nod, and she curtsied before leaving the office with her cart.

"Nothing for your hardworking adviser?" I asked, gesturing at Cinder with my glass. It would have been trivially easy for the maid to slip a little something extra in my drink along with the brandy and champagne, but everything looked and smelled like it should have.

"I never drink during meetings, as a rule," the consigliere answered. There was a barb of disapproval in her answer, but it seemed to be aimed at Roman instead of myself. I could understand why Cinder might disapprove of her boss getting plastered on the job, but what good was being a kingpin if you couldn't drink whenever you wanted?

"So this is a meeting now, instead of an interrogation?" I smiled. Semantics weren't the same as a reprieve, but I needed to hold on to any advantage I could get. "I feel better already." I gave my drink one last sniff test before taking a sip.

Wow. While my travels have been mostly limited to Vale and its surrounding environs, I have rubbed shoulders with a wide variety of people, and drank an even wider variety of booze. But that brandy and champagne was in a class all its own. If I had to guess what French kissing an angel tasted like, I'd like to imagine it was a lot like that cocktail in Don Roman's mansion. If that was my last drink in life, then I could have done far worse.

"So, I should probably begin at the beginning of this case," I continued once I had recovered my composure.

"And when you get to the end, stop. I read that book too," Roman replied in a bored tone. It sounded like he was starting to regret not killing me, and I had to fix that soon, before he changed his mind.

"So Yang hired me to find her boyfriend the morning they found the body. Her best lead told me that Winchester was a regular at a restaurant called the Orchid. I was there interviewing his waiter when the body fell. He said that Cardin was acting normally until a week and a half before his death."

"Amazing coincidence, that. Continue."

"He always sits in a certain part of his booth, something about the view. Soo Winchester sends the waiter to go fetch some wine, and when he gets back, Cardin looks like he's seen a ghost. And he refuses to ever sit at that table again, even if it's the only open spot in the place, until he disappears three days before his murder."

"Cardin always said he hated wine," Roman frowned as he took another drink. "Unless it was just a ploy to get the waiter to go away."

"So I checked out his table the next day. Turns out that the only things you can see from his chair are the Philharmonic building and the tower on the old train station."

"The same one they turned into a museum, right?"

"Yes, and also the same one where they found Henry Marigold's body. I don't suppose you can tell me anything about that?" Roman coughed unsteadily. I didn't piece it together until later, but the fact that the don was nervous about this, even a little, should have been a red flag big enough to see from Atlas.

"My people are still doing some investigating on Marigold's death," he confessed. "Police report says he was killed with a sword, so I'm taking the official word with some salt."

"Anything conclusive you've found out?"

"He lost a lot of blood, whatever killed him. Plenty of defensive wounds on him, and he had something mechanical in his hand. I'm told it looked like half of a flashlight." I gasped as I realized what that flashlight could have been for.

"Care to share with the rest of the class, Mr. Arc?" Cinder asked, curiosity cutting through her smugness like weeds through a sidewalk.

"Cardin's old man was a signal officer during the war," I said. "And Cardin had his father's old Morse Code book on him when we found him. If Marigold knew Morse, he could have been sending Winchester a message when he died."

"About what, though?" Roman reached for two cigars, cut them both, and offered me one. I graciously accepted, and the smells of nicotine and infused cognac started to dull my nerves.

"That's what I needed some help figuring out, you see. I broke into Cardin's boat this morning. Stashed in different spots were a dozen boxes with a symbol I didn't recognize. I could probably draw it for ya if you trusted me with a pen and paper." The Don nodded, and Neo cautiously slid my chair closer to the desk, placing the paper in front of me and handing me the pen with a glare that dared me to try something funny. After a minute or two, I had finished duplicating the logo I saw, with a few scribbled notes explaining the parts I couldn't quite capture. I'm a detective, not an artist. Sue me.

"You're sure this is how it looked?" Cinder took the paper and held it at arm's length. "Because it looks to me like the seal for the Menagerian Bureau of Antiquities. Did you look in any of the boxes?"

"Just one. Two weathered masks, with cat and lizard motifs. I might be able to draw those too."

"They look like burial masks," the _consigliere_ decided once I had finished. "I saw a photograph of something similar in an issue of _NatGeo?_ "

"So why would Cardin want with Menagerian burial antiques?" I asked. "There much money to be had in those?"

"Absolutely, if you don't mind the risk," Roman blew a slow, lazy smoke ring, then launched a smaller second one through the hole in the first. "With all the ruins and crypts being discovered, there are museum curators and other types willing to pay out the nose for artifacts. Which is why the Bureau is clamping down on illegal dig sites and sending armed soldiers to keep watch over all the old dusty stuff. Even some of the criminal elements have started taking offense to foreigners swooping in and taking all their ancestry back home with them."

"What kind of criminal elements are those? Surely it's nothing your boys can't handle."

"The White Fang is what they call themselves, and they're surprisingly tough customers. Sending enough men to make it a fair fight just runs the risk of not leaving me enough soldiers to defend my holdings here in Vale. Adam Taurus has never tried to sink any roots in my piece of the world, and I've gladly returned the favor."

"And what's Adam like?" I leaned back, my ears working like sponges to remember everything I'd heard

"If you ask the man himself, he's a noble warrior seeking to demolish the 'yoke of oppression' hanging over his brethren in Menagerie, and to a lesser extent, Faunus everywhere." The image of Don Torchwick making air quotes as he spoke is still one of the strangest things I have seen in all my years of detective work.

"And if I ask anybody else what he's like?" I glanced innocently towards Cinder. Generally, the _consigliere_ is chosen for their years of experience and knowledge, so it stood to reason that she would keep track of major criminal developments on the other side of the world.

"Taurus is a vindictive wannabe warlord who uses race-baiting to justify murdering people and taking their stuff," Cinder blew a strand of hair out of her face. "I've heard stories of him killing entire families for a perceived insult, and even the Faunus who live there are afraid of being branded 'human-lovers'." The fiery woman didn't stoop to making quotation marks with her hands, but the tone was still present. "To be honest, though, I don't know for sure how much he believes his own propaganda. Maybe he's a zealot with a knack for being organized, or maybe he's just in it for the money. Giving people a boogeyman to blame for all their problems is a pretty easy sell, especially in Menagerie.

"If that's the case, then it almost gives us a chain of events," I reached across the desk to tap my ashes. "Cardin and Henry had some kind of arrangement involving Menagerian antiquities. Cardin sailed out to meet some other courier and loaded the goods onto his yacht, then sailed back to the marina. A rich playboy like him doesn't exactly set off alarms with the port authority. Henry signals him from the bell tower to his booth at the Orchid with details about the rendezvous, and they split the money from the museums—once they give you your cut for kindly arranging their little relationship. Until somebody else gets wise to the affair, finds Marigold, and cuts him down halfway through one of his messages. Winchester realizes something bad is going on, and he starts to panic."

"That's a lovely idea, Mr. Arc, but you're missing several key details," Roman shook his head. "First of which being that I never set the two of them up. The only transactions I've had with Winchester have been him giving me money for a venture, and my paying him back plus interest. I swear on the honor of the Torchwick family that I have never asked him to smuggle or move any actual merchandise for me. Second, Cardin's murder. You yourself admitted that the axe marks and the knife lead towards Junior Xiong. I've heard the stories about how the White Fang makes examples out of their enemies, and it's nothing like what you found at the Orchid. Which means the only other good explanation is—"

"The Kingmaker Scenario," Cinder cut her boss off with a stunned tone of voice. Neo, who had been silently glaring at me this whole time, turned to the _consigliere_ and tilted her head, reminding me of a puppy who didn't understand her master's new command. "It's the name for a situation where one side in a fight can't win, but they can still decide _who_ wins. Imagine two countries at war that are evenly matched. But they have a neighboring country. The neighbor doesn't have enough strength to beat both countries and win it all, but they have enough power that whoever they decide to help will certainly win. Taurus doesn't have the assets to claim any territory here, but he's thrown in his lot with the Triad, and that could be enough to upset the balance."

"And why would he do that, I wonder? Especially if he's as much of a zealot as you say?"

"Even zealots have to pay the bills," Roman took back my pen and paper and began writing something down. "Or if he is just a mercenary using the politics as his excuse, then he could absolutely make up some story about how I hate Faunus or whatever floats his boat. Getting rid of me in exchange for a pile of money to fight the good fight at home, or even some of my old turf. I certainly won't need it, when he's through with me. Son of a _bitch_ , my week just got more complicated."

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But if I can play devil's advocate for a second, all you've got right now is some speculation from both of us that happens to make sense with what we already know. Who's to say somebody didn't steal one of Junior's knives to try and set somebody up?"

"Those knives are custom made for Junior's inner circle," Cinder explained slowly, like she was a school teacher, and I was a slower pupil. "Having one is a symbol of considerable respect in the Triads. You wouldn't just let somebody steal your police badge, would you?" She must have taken my silence as agreement, because she continued. "And you certainly wouldn't just lose something as important as that. If that's a real Triad knife in Winchester's gut, then somebody from the Triad must have put it there."

"But don't worry too much, Jauney-boy," Roman pressed another desk button, and the maid returned with two more drinks. "I'm not about to burn half the city down on just your word. I've got some serious investigating to do before I move against anybody. But if you or any of your friends own any property near Junior's turf, you might just think about selling."

"Can I tell them in person, or will I have to write it in my will?"

"Don't worry, you've given me more than enough information to let you live. In fact, I feel a toast coming on," the Don raised his glass. "To you, Mr. Arc. May your days be as long and prosperous as Adam Taurus's will be short and agonizing." We drank. The shock value had worn off from the first glass, but that cocktail was still clearly top-shelf material, and the spinning room seemed to agree with me. The sweat on my hands appeared out of nowhere like the dew on a spring morning, and I was shaking faintly, like that dew was catching the early breeze.

"Good stuff, there," I barely avoided dropping my glass as I placed it on his desk. "I can't even taste the poison."

"Not poison," Cinder corrected me, though whatever was in my system was twisting her voice into something long and dark and deep as a well. "Just some heavy sedatives. We measured your bodyweight when you were brought here the first time."

"You brought me enough info to live, but not quite enough where I'm okay with letting you know where my home is. I'll have a driver drop you off at the Luna building."

"But what… uff… faynd somth…" No matter how drunk I've been, I've never slurred quite like that, and I've been pretty drunk before.

"If you find something else?" Roman asked, returning his attention to his cigar. "You'll figure something out. You're a smart man, Arc, far smarter than you act." It was a rather kind thing to say to me; much kinder than I expected from the lips of a Mob kingpin. He might have said more nice things too, but I was already down the tunnel, and the only noise I heard was that of a flowing river, and me without a paddle.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Hello again! It feels like it's been a long time since I've posted a new chapter, but here I am! This chapter was obviously a little conversation heavy, but we got a lot of clues out of the way about what is actually going on in this story. Not quite all of the clues, though, so be careful creating too many theories about whodunit. Hope you appreciated the "The Big Sleep" reference in the beginning.

And now, a moment to talk about spoilers. Raymond Chandler once said " _The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing._ " Or in other words, a tale such as this needs two things: To have an interesting and clever mystery, and to be written well, and the kinds of people good at the one are generally bad at the other. I would like to think I've made a pretty clever problem here, but I'm still not a professional writer. So it would mean a lot to me if you kept calm about your theories in future reviews or private messages, because I'm not going to answer them.

To celebrate our crossing of the 41,000 word threshold… I've got nothing, honestly. Remember to follow/favorite, leave a review, make some art, or tell a friend, and maybe we can plan something fun for 50k. Maybe.


	14. Chapter 14: Back in the Saddle Again

Chapter 14: Back in the Saddle Again

To this day, I have no idea what was in that brandy Roman gave me, but it felt like the kind of stuff you either need a good street pusher or a bad pharmacist to get hold of. I woke up on the wooden bench I had placed just outside the door to my office, the morning light turned the words _Jaune Arc, Private Eye_ into some kind of angelic fire, like God himself had written them on the glass with his finger.

The light wasn't doing any favors to my headache, either, as I sat up. Roman's liquor plus the sedatives were giving me a pretty fierce hangover, but I didn't yet have the energy to get up and do anything about it. So I shielded my eyes with my hat and mentally reviewed the events of the last day, the memories flickering past like a slide projector.

It had been an interesting day, to be sure. I ate breakfast at one of the most expensive joints in town with my secretary, where I learned Cardin Winchester's favorite booth had a perfect view of the old train station's bell tower. I went there, where I learned that a major underworld fence had been killed there, the same night Cardin's paranoia set in. I went to the harbor, where I found his boat was loaded with illegal Menagerian antiques. I fought one of Roman Torchwick's violent sociopaths, only to get knocked out and dragged to Roman's mansion. Not only did he _not_ kill me for beating up his soldier, but he almost thanked me, gave me a drink, and answered my questions about this case.

Between his answers and my questions, we arrived at the unpleasant conclusion that Adam Taurus and his White Fang gang was working with Junior Xiong's Triad to get rid of Torchwick, and Cardin's murder was the opening act. Roman said he was going to do some more research before starting a mob war, but he and Cinder both seemed pretty certain that Junior was behind this. I groaned. I needed a nap, I needed a ham sandwich, I needed a brownstone in the good part of town, and I needed a three-week vacation to the opposite side of the world. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. Unless Roman's goons took those from me while I was out.

A quick feeling of my person told me that whoever dropped me off had shown the decency of returning all of my personal effects to their rightful pockets, including my Model 10. The only change from when I dressed myself the previous morning was a cigar in the breast pocket of my shirt, of the same variety Torchwick gave me as we talked. I decided to hold on to it, in case I actually survived enough of this case to celebrate. For now, I needed to find Velvet, make sure she was all right.

As I entered my office, I threw my coat toward the rack behind the door and landed it on the middle hook, a feat I can only duplicate when the stars align just so. If the operator noticed the urgency in my voice, she kept mum and connected me to the Scarlatina residence.

"Hello, this is Satin Scarlatina, with whom am I speaking?" a woman's voice flowed out of the receiver. She had a similar accent to Velvet, but it had been tempered and mellowed by the years like a good whiskey.

"Morning, this is Jaune Arc, private eye. I'm calling—"

"Looking for Velvet, of course. Just one moment," she reassured me warmly before setting the receiver down. I heard a pair of footsteps getting softer in the distance, a brief pause, then another pair getting louder as my secretary picked up the phone.

"Mr. Arc! Thank God you're alive!" Velvet greeted me with her usual calmness and detachment, which was none whatsoever. "I know I'm not at work, but I saw that man and woman in the bookstore, so I—"

"—So you followed the instructions I gave you, which were to make yourself scarce and keep a low profile in case they were looking for you too. I'm not firing you, but I need you in the office an hour ago."

"But who were those people? Did you find something out about Cardin?"

"A whole lot of somethings. I'd rather not say too much over the phone. How soon can you be here?"

"I was helping my mum with something when you called, but I'm almost done. Give me twenty minutes," she explained before hanging up. I didn't have a stopwatch to time her, but I knew I had a little time to make myself feel human again. I splashed some cold water on my face, then used the safety razor I kept in the cupboard above my electric coffee pot to force my stubble back into control. As I shaved, I added the grounds and water to the pot and plugged it into the outlet next to my desk, hoping I would have the chance to enjoy it before my secretary arrived.

I was pouring my second cup when Velvet walked through the door. She was still breathing heavy from the stairs, and her ears bobbed in time with her rising and falling chest. She must have either fixed her binder or found a new one, because her figure once more resembled a secretary instead of a burlesque dancer.

"I swear, the traffic on Burnadicci is only terrible when I'm in a hurry, and— God, you look like hell, Jaune," she said with more sympathy than usual.

"Glad to see you too, Velv," I replied once she brought me a second mug. "So, is the cow Faunus on your mother's side or your father's?"

"I didn't need a cow Faunus in the family. I drank milk," Velvet was almost flippant as she pulled her chair closer to my desk. It was a pretty impressive transition from when I first hired the girl as a secretary. At first, she'd start shaking like a cobweb in a breeze if I even looked at her funny, and now she could almost banter with some degree of skill. Needless to say, I was very proud of her. "So, are you going to explain what happened to you, or shall I brush up on my Twenty Questions?"

I gave her the full story. Fighting Mercury, waking up in Torchwick's house, drinking with the man, comparing notes about the case, and figuring out that Junior Xiong was working with the White Fang. And getting drugged again and waking up in front of my office, can't forget that part. The silence hung over the office like a lead blanket.

"I told you not to take the case," she reminded me.

"And do what, let the police stumble through this plot?" I shrugged my shoulders.

"That is what they're there for, I'm told."

"Half of the officers in this city can't investigate their way out of a wet paper bag, and that's before somebody bribes them to stay in it."

"You think Adam is in bed with the police?"

"I doubt it, with what I know. Adam _might_ be leaning on the cops, but _I know_ Junior's got friends on the force, and they're not all as obvious as Daichi."

"Wait, Yatsuhashi Daichi?" Velvet gave me a puzzled look. "Very tall man, olive skin, bald? How do you know him?"

"We worked together on the force, back when dinosaurs were still a preferred mode of transportation," I gestured with my mug. "The guy was polite to a fault, and great to have around during a fistfight, but the whole precinct knew who was putting the soy sauce on his rice bowls. How do _you_ know him?"

"He was a childhood friend, actually," she explained, "When one of the other kids would bully me, he was the only one scary enough to make them stop. They called him all sorts of horrible things, but never to his face. We've been dating for a few years, off and on. But he told me he was working at a security company now!"

"Officially, he probably does. But if you look closely at who runs the company, I'll bet you find a few friends of Junior's. Most of his people have a legitimate cover to keep the taxman happy."

"And he didn't tell me?" I could hear the hairline crack in her voice, and I had seconds to decide how blunt or how soft I wanted to be with the girl. Fortunately, breaking serious news to sensitive women is one of the vital skills a private eye needs.

"If you started working for the Xiongs, would you tell him?" I raised my eyebrow. "I don't know the man well enough to say why he did it, but nobody up and joins a triad on a whim. Maybe he has his reasons." That calmed her down a little, but I could see the seeds of doubt sprouting through her poker face like weeds through the sidewalk cracks. "But back on topic, we have no idea how many moles Taurus has in the department, if any, so I trust the police even less than normal."

"Would Ren be able to help find these things out? I know you trust him," Velvet offered as she poured two sugar cubes (one white, one brown) and some powered milk into her cup.

"He's about the only one I can trust," I agreed. "But just because I trust him doesn't mean he knows anything. Even if Junior's people in the department know about Adam, they're going to be keeping extra quiet about it, or else the cops on Torchwick's payroll find out and send the information back up the ladder. Think of all those spy novels you like reading about the war, just without the cheesy romances."

"How on Remnant do they ever get any police work done?" she asked between gulps of coffee.

"I worked there for years, and I still don't know. But maybe I should call Ren and see what he thinks of this mess. He always was a good sounding board for when things went pear-shaped like this. How long until your pictures are developed?"

"They should be ready tonight. Should I talk to Yatsuhashi about this?"

"I'd prefer you didn't," I explained as I poured the last of the coffee into Velvet's mug. "If he is involved, then you really shouldn't know half the stuff you know about Taurus and the Fang. And if he's not involved, then him acting on your words without more information might get somebody hurt. But if you've got the chance to talk with the man and the subject comes up, go with your gut." Having said my piece, I lit a fresh cigarette and reached for the phone.

"I will, Jaune. But you really should talk with Ren. I can hold down the fort here today. And about those romances?"

"Huh?" I tilted my head at her choice of question, not unlike a young dog seeing something unusual.

"The romances. In my spy novels. They're not cheesy, they're contrived. Big difference," Velvet explained as she left, her hips giving an extra feeling of defiance to her correction. I waited for my secretary to close the door before picking up the receiver and asking the operator to connect me with Vale PD.

"Good morning, Vale Police Department!" a clear, cheerful voice rang out, like the main bell on Santa's reins. If I wasn't mistaken, the voice sounded like it belonged to the same steel-haired girl at the front desk I had met two days prior. "How may I direct your call?"

"I need to speak with Captain Lie Ren, immediately," I clipped my words at the ends, making sure I sounded different than before.

"Captain Ren is meeting with the commissioner on the other side of town. But I would be glad to deliver a message to him once he returns."

"Fair enough. Tell him I represent the United Building Inspectors of Vale, and there's a rather serious problem in his home's windows that needs adjusting as soon as possible." A little old code between us when we needed to talk with each other. The windows were a sign that whatever it was I wanted to discuss was something that I needed to keep confidential, like drawing the curtains over it. Complaining about the doors meant I needed his help getting into somewhere, and a problem with the foundations meant it was an emergency that needed his help immediately. We had an entire code that probably seemed absurd to any outsiders, but when you're on stakeout with somebody for days at a time, you're desperate for anything to break the monotony.

"I'll make sure he gets the message, sir," the girl assured me before I hung up. There wasn't a whole lot I could do until Ren called me back, so I put my feet up and blew smoke at the ceiling. I never could figure out how to blow smoke rings, so I watched my attempts unravel and collide like a mass of snakes fighting each other. Which isn't a bad metaphor for what it felt like trying to unravel this case.

Nothing here even pretended to add up, and it felt like everybody knew at least one thing I didn't. These were by far my least favorite type of cases. I used to think stakeouts were my least favorite type of case, but sitting outside a hotel room waiting for some wayward spouse to indulge themselves with their paramour was looking mighty tempting right now.

I had finally accumulated some evidence, but none of it meant much unless I could piece it together. My only leads left were Turney's place and whatever dirt Ren could find me. I pulled the little matchbook out of my drawer and held it up to the half-light. The cover looked like the artist fed a rainbow into a wood chipper, then smeared it all over the page, with a cursive letter T sporting some cat whiskers occupying the center. The backside contained a muted version of the front of the matchcover, with some plain black letters giving me the address of "Turney's Bar," along with their weekly schedules and happy hour. The inside of book was completely full of paper matches, the white heads looking rather underdressed compared to the party on the other side of the cover.

Ren was a great detective, but part of me already felt there wasn't much chance of him knowing anything useful. If anything, I was about to go spend the better part of an hour teaching him instead of learning from him. But what else was I supposed to do, saunter up to the counter at Turney's and demand to speak with the criminal mastermind? Making things even worse was that I had already spoken with Torchwick. If Xiong thought I was working with Roman, then going to that bar was just signing my own death warrant. And even if he didn't think of that, why would Junior tell me anything to begin with? Working with the White Fang obviously wasn't supposed to be common knowledge, and he had no good reason to reveal anything until it was too late for his plans to be stopped. If only I had some way to get his attention without revealing what I knew…

I must have been pretty out of it, because the next thing I remember hearing was Velvet answering a telephone call.

"Yes? This is his office, but he's busy. Shall I take a message? Okay. But aren't you—Huh? I was unaware that he—yes, I'll make sure he knows. Thank you." She knocked three times before entering, the confusion on her face hidden by the fog of smoke I had created.

"Who was that on the phone, Velvet?" I put my feet down and opened the window behind my desk.

"I really don't know," she admitted as she took a step back into the less smoky room. "It sounded an awful lot like Captain Ren, but he insisted he worked for Gibson's Gym in town. Something about your membership expiring in the next two days and—where are you going?" I had already stood up, gathered my effects and made for the door before my secretary finished talking.

"Looks like I need to hit the gym again," I explained as I put my hat and coat back on.

"In the middle of a case?" she said. The confusion from the call and disgust from the smoke were starting to fade into shock at me leaving halfway through the conversation. I've put the poor girl through some eccentric behavior over the years, but maybe I was mellowing out or something.

"Trust me, Velv," I added before closing the door, "I need this today."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Oh, crap, where has the time gone? This chapter took much longer than I expected it to take. Graduate studies are a major drain on one's time and sanity, and that's without the industrial-grade writer's block I've been dealing with. I'm not dead, though, and neither is "The Clean Sweep."

Now, that does not mean I'm back to consistency, either. For now, consider me in a state of "semi-hiatus." I'm still working on the story, in my spare time, but I'm far too busy to commit to any real schedule. When I get an actual chapter completed, I will post it on the next Friday, but otherwise don't expect any miracles from me.

Concerning this chapter itself, this was kind of a reload after the exposition we dropped in the last chapter. I'm still finalizing how some of these events are going to be strung together, and there are still several important characters we haven't seen yet. All in due time.

Everything I need to say has been said, so I'll sign off with the usual sad requests. Review me! Follow and favorite! Tell your friends! Art is always awesome!


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